Shaboozey has his first People’s Choice Country Award, and won the first trophy of the evening! The Virginia native won the trophy for The New Artist of 2024, reading a heartfelt speech from stage when accepting his award.

“I prepared a little something, I want to read it to you guys, ’cause it came from the bottom of my heart,” Shaboozey said. “Thank you to People’s Choice, the fans and listeners for this award. I’m so honored and extremely humbled. I never would have thought in a million years I’d be up here at the Grand Ole Opry, accepting something like this. It’s a dream come true.

“Thank you to all the programmers at country radio for supporting me, my management for believing in me, putting in the time and hard work and dedication, and thank you to all my friends and family in Nashville for showing up for me time and time again,” he continued. “Thank you to Empire for being the best independent label partner any artist could ask for, and thank you Beyoncé. You’re amazing.”

Shaboozey undoubtedly won the People’s Choice Country Award because of his mega-hit song, “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” The song was a No. 1 hit both on Billboard’s Country Chart, and the Hot 100 chart. Although Shaboozey knew it was a hit song, he had no idea how much the song would do for him or his career.

 

“I think in the first like minute it was at like 70,000 streams,” Shaboozey recalls on SiriusXM’s Hits 1 Miami with Mack & Jen, speaking of when the song was released. And then they were like, ‘Man, we think it’s gonna take a week to hit a million [streams]. I bet you it’s gonna take a week to hit a million.’ And I was like, ‘Man, we just got 70,000 in two minutes. Like this is gonna hit a million right now.’ You know what I mean? That’s crazy.

“So when they hit a million on that first day, we were just like, label, everyone was just like, going crazy,” he added.

Shaboozey is back at radio with a new single, “Highway.” Find all of his music at Spotify and Apple Music.