Ashley Gorley earned the title of Songwriter of the Year at the 2023 ACM Awards on Wednesday afternoon (May 10), ahead of the live broadcast on Thursday (May 11).

The Academy of Country Music announced Gorley's win in a post to social media, thanking Nashville star Charles Esten for helping surprise him with the news.

As always, the roster of nominees in this category was filled with some of the biggest names in Nashville's songwriting community, including Nicolle Galyon, Chase McGill, Josh Osborne and Hunter Phelps.

Over the course of his career, Gorley has written an unprecedented 64 No. 1 singles, according to his bio on Tape Room Music. Perhaps the most-awarded songwriter working in Nashville currently, Gorley has won the ASCAP Songwriter of the Year trophy an impressive nine times, and in 2023 alone, he's nominated as a writer for three out of the five contenders for ACM Song of the Year. It's been five decades since any other songwriter achieved that feat.

Morgan Wallen, Cole Swindell, Thomas Rhett, Dierks Bentley, Chris Stapleton, Sam Hunt and many more are among the artists who have recorded Gorley's songs.

The 2023 ACM Awards are set to take place at Ford Center in Frisco, Texas, on Thursday night. The show will stream live on Amazon Prime Video. Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks are co-hosting, marking the first time that Brooks has ever hosted a major awards show.

2023 ACM Awards Nominations: Biggest Snubs + Surprises

The biggest change going into the 2023 ACM Awards is that there are seven Entertainer of the Year nominees instead of five. Still, we found five artists who have every right to feel surprised by Thursday morning's (April 13) nominee announcement. See our full list of ACM snubs and surprises below.