Lainey Wilson Was Never ‘Going To Quit’
Lainey Wilson is country music’s top star these days, racking up major award wins, hit songs, and a headlining tour that is selling out all over the country this summer.
We recently asked her what she would tell her younger self about this pinch-me moment in her life she is currently having. She said, “I’d say, ‘It’s not going to happen as quick as you would like it to.’ When I moved here in 2011 in my little camper trailer, I thought, ‘You know, you’ve got to be there to make it.'”
She continued, “I thought that it would happen a lot quicker for me, but I realized in about year three that my journey was going to look a lot different. But just because the opportunities were not coming didn’t mean that I was going to quit.”
Wilson has no other path paved for herself. She said, “This is the only thing I know how to do. This is my life. Country music is my life especially where we grew up in a town of 200 people. It’s more than a genre of music. We eat, sleep, and breathe it. It’s the try of our lives.”
“I don’t know anything different than doing this; it feels like it is truly a part of me. So if I could go back and tell that little girl anything, I’d say, ‘Keep the pedal down, roll your sleeves up with a little elbow grease and a whole lot of faith can change your life.'”
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Backstage, before her recent CMA Fest performance, she recapped her wonderful year in country music in which she was crowned Entertainer of the Year by the CMA and the ACM. She told us, “We’ve been trying to zoom out as much as we can to really see how far we have come in a short amount of time. Like, don’t count the thirteen years I’ve been here, but let’s talk about the last couple. It’s been crazy.”
The country superstar also touched on how it all began with her father and six strings. She said, “My daddy showed me a few chords on a guitar, and that was it for me. It just ran in my soul; it ran in my blood.”
Wilson reiterated what she’s been saying about her beloved genre for a while now. She offered, “Country music is having a moment, and I don’t think it’s slowing down anytime soon. And I’m not talking about just country music—of course, everyone wants to be a part of the genre, and I think that’s awesome—but more importantly, the Western way of life. The culture, the way I grew up on a horse and wearing jeans. It’s really cool to see people start embracing that way of life.”
