Ashley Cooke is officially a CMT Music Awards winner! The rising star won the trophy for Breakthrough Female Video of the Year, for “your place.” The song is from her 2023 Shot in the Dark album.

“I’m just taking a minute to soak this in, because I have dreamed of winning an award like a CMT Award for so long,” Cooke said when accepting the trophy. “This is my very first CMT Award, and award in general, so thank you so much. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you so much to the fans. This was a fully fan-voted award, and I would not be on this stage or any stage without you guys, and I know that damn well, so thank you so much.

“I wanna thank my team, and everybody at Big Loud,” she added. “I wanna thank my family, who are all here tonight. My sister who is my date, who is also crying right now … Thank you all so much!”

Cooke has an ex-boyfriend to thank for being the inspiration behind her hit single.

“The whole inspiration behind the song revolves around this ex-boyfriend that I have who I dated for a minute, and he cheated on me,” Cooke told Country Now. “I was trying to figure out how I wanted to write about it, what I wanted to write about, and I had this idea in my phone for so long called ‘Ain’t Your Place.’ I brought it in the room with Jordan Minton and Mark Trussell, and it literally was such an easy song to write, which I think sometimes that’s a really good indication of just a great song.”

Shot in the Dark had an ambitious 24 songs on it, an intentional decision by Cooke to share so much music with the rest of the world.

“I’ve been writing songs since I was 11,” Cooke told Everything Nash. “I think for me, a big part of why I even got into music was because writing songs is such a release. I love to journal, I love words. I love poetry. And so I think to me, in all of the craziness of my life, not only career, but just being a 25, 26-year-old girl,  there’s so much going on and so much that I’m dealing with and struggling with and happy with and experiencing, and love and life and family and career and all of these things. I was just like, ‘Man,  I just want to write it all out.’ And I did.”

Find “your place” and all of Cooke’s music and upcoming shows at AshleyCooke.com.