Carly Pearce, Lee Brice Win 2021 ACM Single of the Year for ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’

Carly Pearce and Lee Brice are probably both pretty happy now. The country singers took home Single of the Year honors at the 2021 ACM Awards on Sunday night (April 18) in Nashville for their smash hit duet, "I Hope You're Happy Now."

Martina McBride presented the award, and she referenced one of her own biggest hits as she noted that for the first time in ACM Awards history, all of the songs that were up for Single of the Year were sung by females. "This one's truly for the girls," she said before announcing Pearce and Brice as the winners.

Pearce and Brice beat out Miranda Lambert, Gabby Barrett, Ingrid Andress and Maren Morris for the honor. She looked stunned as she hugged Brice before they took the stage. Wearing a bright pink dress, she promised to try not to cry as she gave her thanks for the song's success.

"I love country music more than anything in the whole world," Pearce said before shouting out her co-writers.

"We wrote this song about my story, and I guess it resonated with everybody," she mused before thanking Brice, her management, her record label and her late producer, Busbee, who died not long after wrapping up work on her song.

"This is the last song that my producer worked on ... thank you, Busbee," she added.

Brice pointed out that "God puts people in your lives" before thanking his management, his wife, his record labels and Pearce herself.

"He puts people like you in my life and lets things like this happen. Thank you, Carly," he finished.

The award marks the pair's second win in the 2021 ACM Awards. They were revealed as the winners of Music Event of the Year for their collaboration in an early award announced prior to Sunday night's ceremony.

The 2021 ACM Awards air live on CBS and stream live on Paramount+. Sign up for the streaming service here.