Chris Stapleton is the 2017 CMA Awards Male Vocalist of the Year, for the second year in a row. The singer -- who was nominated in the category along with Dierks Bentley, Eric Church, Thomas Rhett and Keith Urban -- has a hard time believing where his career has taken him, and how far he has come.

"It’s an unimaginable fairytale type of thing," Stapleton shared with The Boot and other reporters backstage after his win. "I’m so proud just to get to make music and go out and play it for people, and make records. That’s the dream, and then when you get all these other things that people are nice enough to give you, that makes the dream an even larger dream."

During the 2017 CMA Awards, Stapleton also performed his single "Broken Halo." The singer says his song choice was a way to honor recent tragic events, including the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting.

"When some of the events that happened this year happened, [CMA Awards producer] Robert [Deaton] called us. There was really only one song in my mind that we were going to play, and it was that one," Stapleton recalls. "I felt like, in light of what kind of tragic year we’ve had, that was the only thing that we could play, and felt like playing. Robert agreed wholeheartedly, so that’s where it went. It wasn’t even much more than a two-second discussion."

Backstage at the 2017 CMA Awards, Stapleton also gave props to the other artists who both performed at and won trophies during the show, adding that he is honored to be part of such a loving community of peers.

"It really is a family out there, and we’re happy when somebody is winning an award or somebody knocks a performance out of the park," he says. "Brothers Osborne knocked it out of the park, Miranda [Lambert] knocked it out – everybody knocked it out of the park tonight. It was a beautiful show, and it was well put together, and the tributes were well done. It’s a proud thing to get to be a part of a show that does something that well at a sensitive time. So, to me, I couldn’t be prouder to have gotten to witness it and be a member of the community that it’s happening in."

Stapleton's latest album, From A Room: Volume 2, will be released on Dec. 1; it follows From A Room: Volume 1, which was released in May. The record is available for pre-order on Amazon and iTunes.

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