NEW YORK (AP) — It's late July. Lainey Wilson is somewhere in Iowa, holding a real road dog — her French bulldog named Hippie — close to her chest. She's on her tour bus, zipping across the Midwest, just another day in her jet set lifestyle.
Next month, she'll release her fifth studio album, the aptly named “Whirlwind," a full decade after her debut record. Today, like every day, she's just trying to enjoy the ride. “It's been a journey," she reflects on her career.
“I’ve been in Nashville for 13 years and I tell people I’m like, it feels like I got there yesterday, but I also feel like I’ve been there my whole life.” Wilson is a fast talker and a slow success story. She grew up on a farm in rural Baskin, Louisiana.
As a teenager, she worked as a Hannah Montana impersonator; when she got to Nashville in early adulthood, she lived in a camper trailer and hit countless open mic nights, trying to make it in Music City. It paid off, but it took time, really launching with the release of her 2020 single, “Things a Man Oughta Know,” and her last album, 2022's “Bell Bottom Country" — a rollicking country-rock record that encompasses Wilson’s unique “country with a flare” attitude. “I had always heard that Nashville was a 10-year town.
And I believe ‘Things a Man Oughta Know’ went No. 1, like, 10 years and a day after being there," she recalls. “I should have had moments where I should have packed it up and went home.
I should have went back .