Thanks to her smash hit “I Hope,” Gabby Barrett has been nominated for and won multiple awards over the past year and a half. But she said it was only recently that she enjoyed a specific moment on an award show that she’d dreamed about all her life. 

Speaking with reporters this week in Nashville, the singer revealed that moment came when she was a three-time winner at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards last month. 

“To come home with three awards was pretty darn cool, and that was the first time I ever got to also go on television and…give like an acceptance speech,” Gabby said.

“[T]hat was something that I would always literally dream about when I was younger…I’d be in my room and practice what I was going to say and look in the mirror and do all that,” she laughed. “And so to actually be there…all of the emotions kind of hit me. And it just made me very thankful.”

Another upside to attending the BBMAs? Gabby got to rub shoulders with all the big stars who were there.  Gabby said she couldn’t help but be starstruck by the artists she saw casually wandering around.

“I was doing some…press and I saw The Weeknd walk past me!” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ And then I also saw Nick Jonas walk past me! So that was pretty cool. It’s cool to see these people in actual person, physically, when you just hear about them and hear about their successes.”

Of course, there are probably plenty of folks who’d get starstruck if Gabby herself walked past them. She can test that theory this summer on tour; she played her first big show of the year last night in Kansas.

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