Jelly Roll Forgot to Thank One Very Important Person During His CMT Music Awards Sweep

Jelly Roll made a clean sweep at the 2023 CMT Music Awards on Sunday night (April 2), winning in all three categories for which he was nominated — including Male Video of the Year. By the time he got onstage to give his acceptance speech for that third and final award, he was feeling very emotional (and, he joked, a little tipsy), so he accidentally left somebody very important out of his list of people to thank.

"You know what I was thinking, I was thinking, 'You're gonna forget everybody, so just speak from the heart,'" the singer told ET Online after the show. "And I'm sorry to my daughter, most importantly. I wanted to thank her and I forgot to.

"I love you Bailee Ann, so much. I thought about it the moment I walked off stage. You've changed my life in so many ways," Jelly Roll continued.

When asked about his daughter's perception of his success, he explained that Bailee is one of his biggest supporters.

"I think she's just proud of me, man. She knows the story. She knows how real it is, and I'm just proud of her, man," he explains.

The singer's teenage daughter frequently appears in his social media posts, and she's joined him onstage and in the studio together. According to a 2020 Facebook post, the singer and his wife have had full custody of Bailee since 2016, as the young girl's mother, Felicia, battled "a deep rooting drug addiction in and out of jail" for years. In 2020, with 16 months of sobriety under her belt, Felicia came back into Bailey's life. Jelly has written about Felicia's addiction struggle in his music, and he and Bailee even collaborated on a song called "Tears Could Talk," which addresses the story.

"It makes my whole family happy to see her battle her way out of addiction and since I had no problem publicizing her problems and my frustration of it we have no problem celebrating her recovery — feels good to have her back to the normal Felicia we all know and love," the singer wrote at the time.

The 2023 CMT Music Awards aired live from Moody Theater in Austin, Texas, on Sunday night (April 2). The show aired live on CBS and streamed live and on-demand on Paramount+. Kane Brown and Kelsea Ballerini served as co-hosts.