When Lainey Wilson accepted her Grammy Award for Best Country Album this year, she looked out at an audience that was larger than the population of her home town.
Raised on a crop farm in Baskin, Louisiana (with a population of less than 250 people), the country artist still remembers the early years of pocketing $20 to perform at the grand opening of a local convenience store.
At 19, Wilson traded in shopping malls for ‘Music City,’ announcing her arrival in Nashville by parking her camper trailer in a studio parking lot. Some nights, after playing at local open mic gigs, she would lie awake in a cold sweat as the sound of tornado warning sirens blared and her solid 20-foot trailer rocked from the wind.
“I was a little fish in a big pond. When you’re kind of famous in a small town, people think that you’re gonna move to Nashville and just make it big. It was a huge culture shock,” says Wilson, who has since gone on to release five studio albums and sell-out headline shows around the world, including her Australian leg earlier this year.
“I knew I was given a gift and I needed to figure out how to use it. No matter if I was still playing for 20 people. I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to feel something and I wanted to make other people feel something.”
It was these stories, which unpacked the complexities of middle-American life, that first sparked Wilson’s love for country.
“Growing up, 90s country was the soundtrack of my life. All the voices that I was listening to on the radio, I felt like I knew them personally. I’m a sucker for a good story and I wanted to do the same thing.”
Turn on the radio, and it’s hard not to feel that the contagious country charm. From Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter to Lana Del Rey’s hotly-anticipated country album Lasso, as Wilson declares in her new album Whirlwind: ‘Didn’t see that coming. Country is cool again.’
And how does the respected singer songwriter feel about the coolification of country? “I saw all these kids on TikTok riding horses and wearing the cowboy hats and wanting to do country things. It makes me excited. I take a lot of pride in the way that I grew up. People are falling in love with something I’ve been in love with forever, and you’re like, ‘where are have you been, but also welcome to the party!’
Between a global tour and writing her new album, Wilson also found time to make her acting debut in season five of Yellowstone. Starring alongside Kevin Costner, Wilson plays ‘Abbey’ a local musician in the beloved television drama.
“I had never done anything like it. The writer and producer of the show said to me, ‘you’re already acting on stage. Do you feel like getting up there every single night if you’re going through something or you’re sick? You still got to put on your big boy pants because people paid to be there to watch you,” she says. “[If I was to act again] I would love to do a rom com or be a country voice for a cartoon.”
As for where the whirlwind will blow Wilson next? Perhaps it’s too early to say, but with a hotly-anticipated album under her belt it’s likely the singer will be hitting the open road.
“My favourite way to listen to a record is top to bottom, which I know people don’t do much anymore but every song is in the order for a certain reason. I hope everybody can listen to Whirlwind that way when they’re driving. The first time I got to listen to this record was going down the road. And it just felt right.”
Wilson’s new album Whirlwind is out now.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
