State Champ Radio Country
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Life in the 21st century is complex.
In addition to all the old stuff – keeping gas in the tank and air in the tires, picking up the kids on time, stressing out over an unreasonable boss – the digital age has piled on more issues: endless passcodes, inconvenient Windows updates, social media trolls and dead phone batteries. If that’s not enough, we’re told democracy is under siege.
The good news is a little attitude adjustment can reduce the stress, at least for three minutes, and Chayce Beckham aims to provide that relief. “Everything I Need” – the follow-up to “23,” which hit No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart dated April 6 – arrives with a brisk tempo, a bright production and a lyrical reminder to focus on the few things that really matter.
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“You don’t need all these bells and whistles and fancy stuff,” Beckham says. “Just being alive on a sunny day is worth a million bucks.”
Appropriate to that sentiment, Beckham didn’t write “Everything I Need” in a typical Music Row office appointment. The song came into existence on the road during Luke Bryan’s 2023 Farm Tour, where concert sites are constructed on rural land. It launched on Sept. 14 outside of Shelbyville, Ky., midway between Louisville and Lexington. Beckham brought along a pair of songwriters, John Pierce (“Sweet Annie,” “Your Heart Or Mine”) and Lindsay Rimes (“World On Fire,” “Cool Again”), for what proved to be a productive run. They knocked out the outlaw-flecked “Devil I’ve Been,” and started in on another as they puffed on cigars on that first day.
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“It’s really great as a writer to watch an audience, watch the artist you’re working with,” Pierce says of writing on tour. “You can see what is kind of needed in a set. You can find the hole and fill it.”
They talked specifically about crafting something upbeat and encouraging – presumably to fill a need – and Rimes kicked into an easy progression on guitar. He attached a rolling train beat to it, and they headed forward without an actual title, focused on the glass-half-full version of daily life.
It wasn’t hard to fit it to Beckham’s personal experience. The weeds on the lawn, credit-card debt and a broken-down motor – the latter spotted by Pierce on a previous co-write at Beckham’s house – all used real-world issues to set up the story. “John was on fire,” Rimes recalls. “He was spitballing lyrics, you know, the broken radiator and all this. We just started laundry-listing things really.”
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Pierce concocted a phrase – “postcard maker” – to describe a sunny day at the end of the first verse, segueing into the chorus, where the tune brightened and the storyline turned fully away from problems to very basic positives: “I’m alive and I’m breathing.”
“We knew the melody should shift up a little bit, just have a lot more power in the chorus,” Beckham says. “We’re just back there jamming on an acoustic guitar and kind of just chipping away at this thing.”
The chorus’ plot morphed into an all-nighter, with the protagonist having fully adjusted his attitude amid classic – and easily missed – wordplay: “When the sun comes up, I’ll let it dawn on me/ I’ve got everything I need.”
Even if the “dawn” quip doesn’t completely register with the listener, the hook’s premise lands with clarity. “The line in front of the hook,” says Pierce, “is the most important line of almost any song.”
The three writers made verse two only half the length as the opening verse, noting that the bad times – like the verse itself – “won’t stick around too long.” Instead, the verse sped back into the chorus, following a Nashville songwriter code. “It’s such a sing-along thing, and it was like, ‘Don’t bore us, get to the chorus’ for sure on that one,” Pierce recites. “It’s not [shorter] because we were lazy, I swear.”
A bridge wasn’t required, since that chorus pretty much said it all anyway. “It’s got everything it needs,” Beckham says. “You don’t need to do anything extra with it.”
Rimes loaded some guitar parts over the drumbeat on the tour bus to form the bones of a demo that they played for Beckham’s band the next day. He would add bass and a couple other instruments after getting back to Nashville, but not a lot. “I kept it pretty simple,” Rimes says. “I didn’t really put any bells and whistles on. It was very country.”
When producer Bart Butler (Jon Pardi, Warren Zeiders) heard “Everything I Need,” he identified it as a sleeper, but he didn’t have much time to work on it. Wheelhouse greenlit a full album, but it came under a tight deadline. When Butler was selected, he had to pull together a studio band in a short week. Some of the musicians he worked with regularly rearranged other gigs to work on a master session, but when his usual cadre of acoustic guitarists were all booked, he asked electric guitarist Rob McNelley for a recommendation. Multi-instrumentalist Gideon Klein became a key piece of the team when they recorded at the Starstruck Studios.
The studio ensemble recreated the basics of Rimes’ demo – “It was such a great, great roadmap,” Butler says. “It sounded like a record.” But he also thought it needed a signature instrumental lick. McNelley and Klein worked together to create a perky uplifting sound, delivered on electric in the opening and on banjo later in the track. Steel guitarist Russ Pahl weaved playful wrappings around that sig lick, and fiddler Jenee Fleenor enhanced it further in overdubs.
On the tracking date’s last run-through, Butler encouraged the band to take off on a closing vamp, which tacked an additional 35 seconds onto “Everything I Need” before it faded.
Beckham did vocal overdubs for the Bad for Me album in the center of Ronnie Milsap’s former studio, now known as Ronnie’s Place, while battling physical challenges. “I got bronchitis or some horrible cold and never-ending, deep congestion and a cough that lasted for weeks,” he says.
On at least one date, he struggled so badly that Butler sent him home, but Beckham was determined to work through it on the days his voice was available. “This is my debut record,” he says. “I have to sing the shit out of it.”
When they turned the album in, Wheelhouse had some issues with the volume of sound on “Everything,” which countered its message of simplicity. Butler readdressed the mix, but never let go of the energy. “There was more there on that track,” he allows. “It’s still busy, but it was way busier.”
Ultimately, the sleeper became a single when Wheelhouse released “Everything I Need” to country radio via PlayMPE on April 12. Predictably, numerous stations asked for an edit over the next two weeks that would snip the instrumental vamp off the end. Butler wasn’t surprised by the request, even if he hated to drop that section.
“I get it,” he says. “It’s all about getting it to three minutes and having radio time for everybody else.” The end version also provides three minutes of relief for listeners who may not have the time to address all the loose ends in their complicated lives.
“’Everything I Need’ is a great way to segue into the summer,” Beckham says, “and for everybody to take a break mentally and listen to something that makes them feel good.”
Nate Smith is hunkered down in a Nashville studio working on his forthcoming second album — but the rising country-rocker can’t help but revisit his past. This is the same studio, he says, where he recordedhis independently released debut EP, 2020’s Reckless, which included his breakout hit, “Wildfire.” When the longing, twangy song went viral on TikTok, it helped Smith score management, publishing and record deals. But that almost never happened.
“I was able to record that because my sister’s husband loaned me $4,000 and we made a little investment deal,” recalls Smith over Zoom, eyes widening in lingering astonishment. “They took a huge risk… But they were able to make enough to put a down payment on their house from [my music].”
During his wildly successful past few years, Smith, 38, has hit numerous milestones: He released his self-titled debut album in April 2023, kicked off his biggest headlining tour yet at the start of 2024 and topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart with “World on Fire” for 10 weeks in February, tying Morgan Wallen — for whom he’s currently opening stadiums — for the longest-leading No. 1 in the chart’s history. But despite all that, Smith is mostly just happy to “have a stable job” now. “I paid my car off yesterday. From music!” he exclaims. “I can pay my rent and I can buy Christmas presents. That, to me, is making it.”
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Smith learned to play guitar at 13 and became a worship leader at 16 in his hometown of Paradise, Calif., and as a young adult, he became a certified nursing assistant. But at 23, Smith moved to Nashville to fully pursue music. He scored a record deal with powerhouse Christian company Word Records and a publishing deal with Centricity Music, but without much success, so he moved back to Paradise in 2011.
He may have stayed, too, had it not been for the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. Smith and his family survived 2018’s Butte County Camp Fire, but he lost his home. “If I had stayed in that apartment another hour, I wouldn’t have lived,” he says. Two years later, Smith packed his car with his remaining belongings and headed out to Nashville for a second time — now with nothing left to lose.
Nate Smith
Emily Dorio
The Camp Fire prompted Smith to write “Wildfire,” about how a love interest can generate a less-destructive kind of heat. Smith’s managers, The Core Entertainment’s Kevin “Chief” Zaruk and Simon Tikhman, recall receiving the song early in the pandemic and soon after requesting a Zoom meeting with the unknown artist. “He had this bushy, wide-eyed personality of a guy who you know has been told ‘no’ every single step of the way and suddenly had a little momentum,” Tikhman says. “We just kind of fell in love with the guy and were flying to Nashville a week later to meet with him.” By summer 2020, The Core signed Smith to a management deal. A Sony/ATV publishing deal soon followed, as did a Sony Music Nashville record deal in 2021.
“If you look at an artist like Nate and his tough road to get where he is today, that’s the country story,” Tikhman continues. “They call Nashville the ‘10-year town…’ It has been a 20-year town for Nate.” Adds Zaruk: “The music business is so hard. To see that it can work and to see it happen to someone not in their 20s… He is an example of how hard work pays off.”
Today, Smith’s work ethic and his own strain of rock-infused country have helped him collect two Country Airplay No. 1s. An alt-rock disciple, he has injected edge into Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” revitalized Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” and often played Foo Fighters’ “My Hero,” which he calls his “ultimate favorite” song, during his live sets. Smith is also an EDM and pop fan; he recently met Marshmello and would love to collaborate. Sustained radio success, paired with growing mainstream interest in country music, has, Smith figures, provided him with “a lot of leverage.”
“We’re a little hillbilly genre over here, but [pop stars are] wanting to be a part of it, and Beyoncé coming in and some other folks… it’s exploding the genre,” he says. “They’re still trickling in; Post [Malone] hasn’t put his album out yet. There’s an opportunity right now… it’s definitely the time to go DM your favorite pop star.”
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Meanwhile, Smith and his management are working overtime to translate his current moment into a lasting career. “You can text Chief at 3 a.m., and he’s going to get back to you,” he says with a smile. “It’s kind of sickening, but we’re all like that.” He recently started a new protein-heavy diet and has given up drinking — for now. “The name of the game is don’t get sick and have endurance and be in shape,” Smith says. “This is an athletic thing, and I didn’t realize that… I love to party, but it’s just slowing me down.”
When Smith worries about losing momentum, his team reminds him where he was just a few years ago. “They always bring my perspective back,” he says, recalling Zaruk’s advice: “You were surviving before, working paycheck to paycheck and barely making ends meet. Now you’re living — we get to live.” Smith holds his freshly tattooed forearm to the camera, showing off some new ink that’s still healing: “Live. Don’t Exist.”
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Linda Martell’s granddaughter Marquia Thompson is running late to launch her 82-year-old grandmother’s Zoom interview with Billboard — but for a good reason.
In late March, Beyoncé featured Martell on two spoken-word segments on Cowboy Carter. Shortly after, the star posted a photo of herself wearing an official Martell T-shirt from the pioneering country artist’s website — and today, Thompson needed to run by the post office to mail some of the nearly 600 orders she has received since. Martell’s merchandise sales aren’t all that have been soaring. Her catalog streams also ballooned from a little under 5,000 from March 22 to 24 to 61,000 from March 29 to 31, according to Luminate — an 1,100% surge immediately following the album’s March 29 release.
The attention is long overdue. In 1969, Martell became the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry. At the time, she didn’t know she was making history, though she was very aware that there were no other “Black guys or Black girls there” onstage or off, she says. She also didn’t know that she would receive two standing ovations. “I was surprised,” she says with a laugh.
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Her breakthrough single, “Color Him Father,” peaked at No. 22 in September 1969 on the Hot Country Songs chart; it remained the highest-charting track on the tally by a Black woman for more than 50 years until Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em” reached No. 1 in February. And yet, until Beyoncé helped shine a light on them, Martell’s accomplishments had largely faded into obscurity.
“When I was actively pursuing country music 14 years ago, I Googled ‘Black female country singers’ and Linda Martell’s name came up,” says Mickey Guyton, who wasn’t previously aware of Martell. “She is truly the reason why I had the courage to sing country music.”
Martell released only one album, 1970’s Color Me Country, but it was a beauty. Her voice was clear and resonant with plenty of twang reflecting her South Carolina roots on the Shelby Singleton-produced set of traditional-leaning tunes. In addition to “Color Him Father,” two other tracks charted in the top 60. In its review at the time, Billboard wrote, “Linda impresses as a female Charley Pride. She has a terrific style and a true feeling for a country lyric.”
Linda Martell with her granddaughter Marquia Thompson (left) and daughter Tikethia Thompson.
Gavin McIntyre
But by 1974, fed up with label clashes, a legal battle with her manager and the ongoing racism she endured, Martell left Nashville.
“Linda Martell has always resonated with me personally because her story is so many of our stories, which is why I named my show after her,” says artist Rissi Palmer, who hosts Apple Music’s influential Color Me Country Radio program. “She didn’t ask for all the politics — she just wanted to sing. Period. I admire her grace under pressure, focus to stay the course and the way she advocated for herself against a manager and record producer who were interested in gimmicks and not creating a lasting career for her.”
More than a half-century later, Martell, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law outside of Columbia, S.C., looks back on those days as bittersweet. Sitting in her favorite spot — a gray reclining lounger in the living room — and wrapped in a black and red blanket, she is quick to respond and even quicker to laugh and smile, despite some of the painful memories that clearly still sting. She relies on Thompson, who serves as her de facto manager, to fill in some details.
Though she started out performing pop and R&B, Martell grew up listening to country music and had a natural affinity for its cadences. Her sharecropper father sang country songs around their Leesville, S.C., house, and the country station came in loudest on the family radio, around which they would listen to Grand Ole Opry broadcasts on Saturday nights.
Her future manager heard Martell sing a handful of country songs when she performed at an Air Force base, and she moved to Nashville, where producer Singleton signed her. Singing songs with good stories appealed to her, and Martell cut Color Me Country in one day. “That was easy,” she says. “I was singing always already, so it didn’t bother me. I had fun. It was great.”
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During that period, there were moments both good and bad. But mainly, Martell recalls, she felt lonely. “Black artists didn’t sing that kind of song,” she says of country music. Though she says she didn’t have issues with any of her fellow artists, no other acts, white or Black, encouraged her, with the exception of multi-instrumentalist and Hee Haw host Roy Clark. “He’d make you feel at home,” she remembers of her appearance on the variety show. “He would sit beside me and talk. It felt very natural.”
It was worse on the often-hostile road. Her late brother, Lee, was in her band and provided company, but the heckling from some audiences was painful. “Most of the time, you really didn’t pay attention because if you do, oh, it hurt,” she says. “But we heard it. Me and my brother wouldn’t [respond]. He’d say, ‘Well, they’re ignorant.’ We came to work, and we knew what to do and what to say. That’s all.”
After her first manager sued her (over his commission) and Singleton and his label switched their focus to Jeannie C. Riley (who had a huge hit with “Harper Valley, PTA”) but tried to prevent Martell from recording elsewhere, she eventually got “tired of it” and left Nashville.
Martell revisited R&B music and lived in California, Florida and the Bronx, where she and her then-boyfriend owned a record store. In the 1990s, she returned to South Carolina, where she drove a school bus and then worked in a classroom until she retired in her 60s. She now enjoys spending time with her five children, 13 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
As Beyoncé worked on Cowboy Carter, her team asked Thompson if Martell would be interested in appearing on it, then presented Martell with the script for her spoken interludes. Martell was already a big Beyoncé fan. “One thing my grandmother will notice is a young woman who can sing,” Thompson says. “I’m very, very glad” to be on the album, Martell says, adding that she appreciates the attention Beyoncé has brought to her music.
Linda Martell photographed on April 24, 2024 near Columbia, S.C.
Gavin McIntyre
But Martell had already been reflecting on her story before Beyoncé came calling. In 2020, Thompson began work on Bad Case of the Country Blues: The Linda Martell Story, a documentary about her grandmother featuring interviews with Palmer, songwriter-author Alice Randall and others. She plans to screen the nearly finished film locally this fall before a wider release. Thompson launched a GoFundMe to cover the final touches and hopefully release the doc independently in order to retain ownership.
Despite all the hardships and a career cut short through no fault of her own, Martell’s response is swift when asked whether she’s glad she made country music in the first place: She quickly nods yes. “It’s very nice,” she says. “I wouldn’t change nothing.”
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
With friends like Post Malone and Morgan Wallen, look no further for some help having a good time. The duo unveiled their long-awaited collaboration, “I Had Some Help” on Friday (May 10), less than a month after they debuted the track during Wallen’s headlining spot at the country music festival, Stagecoach. Post Malone previously teased the uptempo […]
Legendary country songwriter Cindy Walker, whose most famous song is the cross-genre classic “You Don’t Know Me,” was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (SHOF) in a special event on April 19 at historic Columbia Studio A in Nashville.
The ceremony took place during a SHOF Master Session with Liz Rose, a 2023 SHOF inductee. Rose spoke fondly of her close relationship with the late songwriter and presented the award to Walker’s niece Molly Walker. Rose’s daughter Caitlin Rose performed “You Don’t Know Me,” which Walker co-wrote with Eddy Arnold, who had the initial hit with the song in 1956.
“This would’ve made her so proud,” Molly Walker said at the event. “And the thing that gets me is, when we hear Cindy’s songs, she’s still with us. I can’t tell you how much this would have meant to her and her family.”
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The event was hosted by Belmont University’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business. It was co-hosted by SHOF board member Fletcher Foster, who chairs the SHOF Nashville Committee.
The annual SHOF gala in June does not normally include posthumous inductions – though this year’s inductees include Steely Dan, whose Walter Becker died in 2017. The SHOF prefers the June event to have a celebratory mood. But it intends to continue hosting posthumous inductions at unique venues and special events such as this one.
“The ceremony at Columbia Studio A was warm, intimate, and respectful,” Foster said in a statement. “SHOF president and CEO Linda Moran says this now sets the stage for future posthumous inductions.”
Walker, who died in 2006 at age 87, was in the first class of inductees into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1997, she became the first female songwriter to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2009, Walker received the Poet’s Award from the Academy of Country Music.
In 2006, Willie Nelson’s album You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker, received a Grammy nomination for best country album. Fred Foster produced the album, which was released nine days before Walker’s death. The album included “Bubbles in My Beer,” “You Don’t Know Me,” “Sugar Moon,” “I Don’t Care and “Cherokee Maiden.”
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Walker’s first recorded song was “Lone Star Trail,” recorded by Bing Crosby, the top star of the era. She wrote 50 songs that were recorded by Bob Wills, dubbed “the King of Western Swing.”
Walker even had a hit record as an artist in 1944. “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again” reached No. 5 on Billboard’s Most Played Juke Box Folk Records, a forerunner to today’s Hot Country Songs.
Walker had numerous No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart across the decades, including “Sugar Moon” (Bob Wills, 1947), “Take Me in Your Arms and Hold Me” (Eddy Arnold, 1950), “Cherokee Maiden” (Merle Haggard, 1976) and “You Don’t Know Me” (Mickey Gilley, 1981).
Ray Charles recorded “You Don’t Know Me” on his landmark 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, which topped the Billboard 200 for 14 weeks. Charles’ version of the song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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Walker’s many other hits include “Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age” (Ernest Tubb & Red Foley, 1950), “Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)” (Roy Orbison, 1962) and “Bubbles in My Beer” and “Distant Drums” (Jim Reeves).
Walker unquestionably paved the way for such top contemporary country songwriters as Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey. The latter is another of this year’s SHOF inductees, along with the aforementioned Steely Dan plus Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley, Dean Pitchford and R.E.M.
In addition to these inductees, Diane Warren is set to receive the Johnny Mercer Award, the organization’s top honor, and SZA is set to receive the Hal David Starlight Award, which recognizes up-and-coming talent.
Walker was a solitary writer. She once explained her approach by saying, “Picasso doesn’t have a co-painter.” But if an artist gave her the idea or title for a song, she would include them in the credits, such as Eddy Arnold, who gave her the idea for “You Don’t Know Me.”
Walker shares that tendency to write solo with Warren, this year’s Mercer Award recipient. Warren collaborates on occasion, but more often than not, she works alone.
Given the threads that link Walker with some of this year’s other inductees and honorees, it’s a shame that her induction was handled separately. The idea should be to demonstrate the common threads that unite songwriters across genres and generations.
A BMI writer, Walker wrote every day, rising at 5 a.m. with a cup of black coffee to start the day in her writing studio. She once said she knew a song was finished “…once I was ready to fight a room full of tigers not to change a single word.”
Bunnie XO took to social media on Wednesday (May 8) to reveal the devastating news that her father, Bill, has died. “Hey Bill, I’m going to miss you,” the Dumb Blonde podcast host wrote alongside a series of photos and videos with her father throughout the years. “You are still my favorite rock star & […]
Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley are spilling the tea on details of what led to the split between the former Florida Georgia Line bandmates. Hubbard and Kelley each appeared on separate episodes of the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast, with each giving their version of events that transpired leading to the duo’s breakup.
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Hubbard and Kelley played their final concert together as FGL in September 2022 at the Minnesota State Fair.
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Hubbard appeared on the podcast earlier this week, stating that it was Kelley who initiated the breakup in order to pursue a solo career.
“For me, it was really unexpected. But [Brian Kelley] came to me and said, ‘Man, I’m really feeling like I want to do a solo thing. And I’m like, ‘Really?’ We were just getting out of our first deal. We were kind of in a sweet spot that we had worked for 10 years to get to,” Hubbard said. “I’m like, ‘Why don’t we ride this thing out for like five more years, 10 more years, and then we can do the solo thing or whatever.’
“But again, like, I wanted to support him. He was adamant, like, ‘Nah, now’s my time. I really need to do this for myself.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, hey, whatever you need to do, bro. Like, what do you want from me?’ He’s like, ‘I just want support.’ So I’m like, OK you got it … you know maybe this will bring us back together and we can do a reunion tour,’” Hubbard continued. “He definitely initiated the whole thing from the beginning … when I say caught me off guard, it wasn’t that we had never mentioned it before, it’s just I didn’t think it was going to happen then.”
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Hubbard thought he would just be a songwriter, but realized he would miss being an artist. He also said that after hearing that Kelley wanted to go solo, “There was definitely a period of time where I was confused, like, ‘Why?’ And I even told him, we had good conversations around it … it felt like a divorce … BK had this thing were he wanted to still do Florida Georgia Line, but he wanted to do the solo thing, too, and I had to tell him … I can’t do both,” Hubbard shared. “I said, ‘I’m going to give you the choice, but it’s either Florida Georgia Line or solo careers.’ I don’t have capacity to do two careers, and also it’s going to get super sticky. When we’re writing songs, who are we writing for? When we got two show offers, an FGL date and a solo date, what are we taking? I don’t even logistically see how that would work, much less emotionally.”
Kelley appeared on the podcast Thursday morning (May 9) to share his version of things, stating that they had talked about each “having extra outlets” for releasing solo music as early as 2016.
“I had voiced that I want to obviously keep doing FGL, but for me, in my off time, when songwriters, creatives are alone, you find even more of yourself. Over the years … there are going to be songs that I write … that aren’t going to fit the brand of FGL, and so it was important to me to continue to honor my artistry, my songwriting, and so I had voiced that for a long time,” Kelley said. “It wasn’t a surprise, because the marker was that once the deal was up … I had an idea that once the deal was up, Tyler would get a solo deal under the same label, I would get a record deal and we would renegotiate a new record deal.”
Kelley said that he had brought up the idea to perform lengthy, three-hour concerts, with no openers, that would include Florida Georgia Line songs as well as space for each of them to perform solo music.
“I wanted to do it all,” Kelley said. “It wasn’t out of bounds. You look at Lady A — Hillary [Scott] does some solo records in the Christian space; Charles Kelley has done some solo stuff, he does some shows and I love how that operates. I think that’s pretty special that you can honor yourself and you can honor what you built … that’s the mindset that I had. It wasn’t just that I had to have a solo career — I would word it as ‘I want a solo outlet, as a creative, as a songwriter.’ I wanted to reshape that part of the story. It gets sticky about what things go where? I think it’s easy to figure out. It’s not an emotional thing for me when we’re talking about business and creativity.”
Kelley said they had agreed to wait on putting out solo music until their recording contract had ended and they had put out their fifth FGL album. He noted, however, that he got a call in December 2020, informing him that Hubbard was going to be putting out a solo song with Tim McGraw; in January 2021, Hubbard and McGraw released “Undivided.”
Kelley said he was “surprised … shocked, for sure, just like, ‘I thought we had a deal in place about what the plan was.’ Going back to my main thing, is protecting FGL. I didn’t think that was a good look, if I’d have done it or if he had done it. FGL was my top priority … a lot of people think I just left and wanted to do solo stuff, because that’s what he’s saying.”
Kelley also noted that they also went to therapy sessions to discuss their plans for managing solo creative initiatives.
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Hubbard released his debut EP, Dancin’ in the Country, in August 2022, followed by his full-fledged, self-titled solo album in January 2023. Hubbard has since released earned a No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hit with “5 Foot 9,” and recently released his new album Strong.
Kelley’s debut solo EP, BK’s Wave Pack, released in April 2021. He followed with the full album Sunshine State of Mind in June 2021.
Kelley said that after his June 2021 album came out, that was when, he said on the podcast, “it was made known to me that we were kinda done,” clarifying that he heard directly from Hubbard.
“It went from no music for the foreseeable future, to now we’re not even going to tour … I’m just here to tell the truth, I’m not here to try to burn down anything, whatever, I’m just here to stand up for myself and my family, and Iike I said, the fans,” said Kelley, whose new album, Tennessee Truth, arrives Friday (May 10).
Singer-songwriter Scotty McCreery co-wrote nearly every song on his fifth studio album, Rise and Fall (out May 10 on Triple Tigers), but his steady hand throughout the writing process didn’t come courtesy of the typical, regimented writing sessions on Nashville’s Music Row.
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The North Carolina native brought some of his closest songwriting collaborators, including Brent Anderson, Monty Criswell, Derek George and writer-producer Frank Rogers, on a writing retreat some 500 miles away from Music City, to McCreery’s home outside of Raleigh.
“It’s heaven on earth,” McCreery told Billboard of the writing retreat. “It moves at a slower pace. It puts your mind in a creatively different space than a scheduled write at 11:00. It was just more of hanging out and seeing what happens. These are some of my favorite songs we’ve ever written.”
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That unhurried stretch of time led to hours of teasing out song ideas, fashioning melodies and refining lyrics — resulting in many of the album’s songs such as “Fall of Summer” and radio single “Cab in a Solo,” which hit No. 2 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. A later Nashville-based mini-retreat with many of the same writers, plus Jeremy Bussey and Bobby Hamrick, produced more of the album’s songs, such as “Lonely” and “Little More Gone.”
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“For me, having a personal connection to a song makes me believe it and feel it more,” McCreery says. “It makes it feel like my album, as opposed to just a collection of songs.”
McCreery’s commitment to quality songs has been key to his garnering five Country Airplay No. 1s, including the three-week chart-leader “Damn Strait” in 2022. Along the way, McCreery has made his devotion to country history known, following in the footsteps (and burnished vocal stylings) of genre forebears like Randy Travis and Keith Whitley on such songs as nostalgic 2018 hit “Five More Minutes” or the small-town ode “Water Tower Town.”
That mission emanates throughout Rise and Fall. McCreery, 30, grew up immersed in ‘80s and ‘90s country sounds, which also happen to be experiencing a resurgence in the genre’s modern day. Light-hearted fare such as “Stuck Behind a Tractor” and “And Countin’” mesh with heartbreak brushoffs such as “Lonely,” the bluegrass-inflected album-closer “Porch” and the faith-filled “Red Letter Blueprint.”
“It’s no secret why [the album] sounds that way, but we weren’t chasing a certain sound,” says McCreery, who is managed by Triple 8 Management’s Scott Stem. His vision for the album was simpler: “We wanted to make country music. I said, ‘Let’s make an album that just feels good to me.’”
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Though another album track, the rowdy “Can’t Pass the Bar,” doesn’t share the seemingly requisite parenthesized title of songs like John Michael Montgomery’s “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident)” or Garth Brooks’ “Ain’t Goin’ Down (‘Til The Sun Comes Up),” it features a similar galloping pace that helped make those songs into classic hits — and a challenge for any vocalist.
“I was thinking as we were writing it, ‘Holy cow, this is going to be tough,’” McCreery says, “but I knew I wanted to write a song like that, because I grew up listening to those kinds of songs. The song was quick, so our minds were moving at a mile a minute, but it was a fun write. Once I tried to sing the demo, I was like, “Oh boy, this is going to be something to sing.’”
“No Country for Old Men” longs for the classic sounds of years gone by, and showcases McCreery sinking lower than ever into his deep bass register, while name-checking Conway Twitty’s “Tight Fittin’ Jeans,” Ernest Tubb’s “Walking the Floor,” and Merle Haggard’s “Swinging Doors.” He wrote it during the retreat with Anderson, George, Rogers and Criswell.
“We’d had a long day of writing, some cold beers, and sat around the kitchen tables with our guitars and got to work,” McCreery says. “Everybody loved this idea and wanted to be in on it. It was fun to mention those names and weave in song titles and influences. I wish there was a camera filming us while we were writing the song. We were laughing, hootin’ and hollerin’ just with how it came together — it was a fun way to write a song.”
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Some of McCreery’s biggest hits have drawn directly from his own story, such as “Five More Minutes,” inspired by his grandfather’s death, and “This Is It,” which highlights his love story with his wife Gabi. That arc continues on his new album, with the cover (the shot was taken at the same place in the North Carolina mountains where McCreery proposed to Gabi) as well as “Love Like This,” written after the couple welcomed their son Avery in October 2022.
“The minute Avery was born, I just felt a different kind of love,” McCreery says. “Seeing your kid for the first time, I’d never felt that feeling before. If you go back and look at the caption of the Instagram post I did after Avery was born, that was the caption — ‘Never known a love like this.’ This is my daddy song to Avery, and every time I listen to it, it still gets me choked up a little bit.”
“Hey Rose,” the lone song on the album not from McCreery’s pen, he had held onto for nearly 10 years. He was taken with the song’s redemptive love story and tucked it away, hoping for the right time to record it.
“We were making a record when it got pitched to me [in 2015], but it didn’t feel like it fit that album,” McCreery says. “When I was recording [Rise and Fall], we had an hour left in the studio and we pulled this song out. The whole band, everybody in the studio, was like, ‘This has to make the record.’ I pleaded with the label a little bit to let me have an extra song and they graciously agreed.”
Like the album’s title, McCreery has seen his share of career mountaintops and low points. His debut album, 2011’s Clear as Day, spent six weeks atop Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and his debut country single “I Love You This Big” become a top 15 Country Airplay hit following his coronation as winner of the 10th season of American Idol. Afterwards, his career temporarily stalled, and he parted ways with Universal Music Group Nashville before signing with Triple Tigers in 2017. The WME client has painstakingly rebuilt his hitmaker status through his music and multiple headlining tours.
In late April, two of McCreery’s heroes, Travis and Josh Turner, welcomed him as the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry — with that induction ceremony representing three generations of renowned singers who have remained committed to preserving and furthering country music’s traditional sounds. Joining the lineage of more than 200 artists who have been part of the esteemed Opry family is a nod that keeps McCreery focused on what he does best — writing (and performing) country music.
“I love writing songs. I love sitting down with a blank sheet of paper and a few hours later, you’ve got a piece of art — it’s a sense of accomplishment when you write something you’re proud of,” McCreery says.
For the title for her follow-up to her Grammy-winning 2022 album Bell Bottom Country, all Lainey Wilson had to do was look at her the swirl surrounding her own life.
Whirlwind, out Aug. 23 (Broken Bow/BMG), reflects what the country star’s life has felt like for the past two years as she has become one of country music’s fastest rising stars.
“My life has just been constantly changing at a very rapid pace,” says Wilson, who is on the cover of the Billboard’s 2024 Country Power Players issue. “The truth is there is just no slowing it down even if you tried. But throughout all of it, in a crazy way I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
Amid the frenzy of the past few years since her breakthrough single, “Things a Man Oughta Know,” became her first No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, Wilson noticed a pattern in her conversations. “Whether I’m running into somebody and they’re saying, ‘Man, your life has been a whirlwind’ — or whether the word’s coming out of my mouth, or I open a book and see the word ‘whirlwind,’ it just seems to be surrounding me,” she says. “Whirlwinds cause turbulence that cause chaos. But at the end of the day, you figure out how to come back to the center.”
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Wilson, the reigning CMA Awards entertainer of the year, describes Whirlwind as “the Western sister of Bell Bottom Country,” and lyrically more “introspective” than previous efforts: “I feel like it’s got a little bit more character [and] cinematic storytelling.” Wilson teamed again with producer Jay Joyce, who produced Bell Bottom Country and its predecessor, 2021’s Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’.
Lainey Wilson, Whirlwind
Courtesy Photo
Because Wilson’s schedule has become so busy, there was no time to leisurely craft songs for the new album. Instead, she had to work with much greater intent and focus. “I like to be able to pick from 200 [songs] to have my 12. That didn’t happen this year,” she says. “So I had to really focus on quality over quantity, which we did. And we were figuring out what was working — it was bringing people out on the road to get it done — and I stayed pretty inspired.”
Wilson wrote with familiar collaborators, including The Heart Wranglers — the songwriting trio composed of her, Trannie Anderson and Dallas Wilson, who together penned “Heart Like a Truck,” among other hits— as well as new partners, like Jon Decious.
Though she says time constraints meant “there was not a whole lot of trying new things for me” on Whirlwind, it was still very important for Wilson to collaborate with people “who have experienced different things in life and to make sure that the music is well rounded and coming from a lot of different angles. But, yeah, we kind of had to cut the s–t, to be honest with you. We had to get to it.”
Wilson drew from her own life, but also from her fans when it came to digging deep for inspiration for the songs. “My experiences in the past few years have made me more confident in who I am and in my values. When I was writing for this record, I felt like I was writing something that needed to be written and it was something that meant something to me,” she says. “Because I have gotten to know so many of my fans and heard so many other stories in the past few years, I feel like I was writing it for them as well. I am the kind of songwriter to where I don’t have to have experienced it firsthand to write about it.”
Much to her own surprise, Wilson wasn’t intimidated by the commercial and critical acclaim for Bell Bottom Country — including winning album of the year at the ACM and CMA Awards and best country album at the Grammys — when creating its successor.
“I thought that maybe it was going to because I was like, ‘Oh, shoot, we’re winning these awards and is it going to really freak me out when I get ready to make this next batch of music?’ I think it’s just because I’ve accepted it, but I don’t let it define me as an artist,” she says. While she stresses she is extremely grateful for the awards, and as a little girl dreamt about what she might say on the awards stage, “I wasn’t dreaming about looking at these trophies on my shelf. I was dreaming about writing songs and playing shows — and so that’s what I’ve got to keep doing. “
In a sign of Wilson’s increasing clout, her road band plays on Whirlwind instead of the cast of studio musicians who typically appear on country albums. “We’ve played close to 400 shows in the past two and a half years. I knew they could do it,” Wilson explains. “I felt like that’s where the magic was going to come from this time.”
When Lainey Wilson played Australia for the first time in March, she made sure to meet the country’s animal ambassadors: She held a koala; she pet a kangaroo. But it wasn’t all furry fun.
“I got crapped on by a bird twice,” Wilson says in her thick Louisiana drawl, shaking her head in bemused disbelief. “In the exact same spot. I heard it was good fortune, so I was like, ‘Go ahead. Do what you got to do, bird.’ ”
But if there’s anyone who doesn’t need luck, it’s Wilson. With a perseverance and grit that’s reflected in her music, the ascendant 31-year-old country star has made her own. After she moved to Nashville in 2011, Wilson endured a decade of disheartening struggles — including seven American Idol rejections. But over the past two-and-a-half years, she has broken records and reached new milestones at a staggering pace — all without compromising her traditional country sound.
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When “Save Me,” her urgent duet with Jelly Roll, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in December, only six weeks had passed since her solo hit, the coming-of-age tale “Watermelon Moonshine,” had summited the list — the shortest stint between No. 1s for a female artist in the chart’s 34-year history. “Watermelon Moonshine” appeared on Wilson’s most recent album, 2022’s Bell Bottom Country (Broken Bow Records/BMG), which took home both the Academy of Country Music (ACM) and Country Music Association Awards for album of the year, as well as the Grammy for best country album — only the ninth record ever to complete that trifecta. And at November’s CMA Awards, Wilson became the first woman to win entertainer of the year since Taylor Swift in 2011 and the first artist since Garth Brooks in 1991 to win best new artist one year and entertainer of the year the next.
At times, the rush has been overwhelming. “I do feel like the 10 years of nothing happening slightly prepared me, but I don’t think you can ever really fully prepare yourself for everything coming at once, and you’re just trying to hold on for dear life,” Wilson says.
“Sometimes when you’re moving that fast, maybe artistically you’re not ready. But she spent 10 years honing her craft,” says Jon Loba, BMG’s president of frontline recordings for North America, who signed Wilson in 2018. “The music was there, the personality was there, the performance was there. So in a sense, that happened overnight, but it has been a long build. It’s just the awards and the recognition have all come in an accelerated fashion.”
Georges Chakra suit, House of Emmanuele earrings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
One line in particular from Wilson’s acceptance speech for female artist of the year at the ACM Awards last May encapsulates her personal credo: “If you’re going to be a dreamer, you better be a doer.” And Wilson is nothing if not a doer. On this late-March morning, she has flown 14 hours on a commercial flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, landing at LAX at 7:30 a.m. and coming straight to Pasadena for this interview and its associated all-day photo shoot, even showering on location instead of first stopping at her hotel.
Getting a caffeine jolt from an iced brown sugar oatmeal shaken espresso from Starbucks, she sits on a bench in the lush backyard as birds chirp. Clad in a cozy, loose-fitting sweatsuit, Wilson pulls her knees up against her chest to shield against the slight morning chill. She’s not wearing any makeup, her long blonde hair sticking out from under a ball cap, her bare feet still sunburned from sitting in a Sydney park.
Wilson’s relaxed vibe contrasts markedly with the electric buzz she says she’s still feeling from the reception she received in Australia. “All I could think about was little 9-year-old Lainey just wanting to write music about my life and how in the world could somebody on the other end of the world relate to it,” she reflects. “It just goes to show you that we’re all a lot more alike than you think.”
Growing up in tiny Baskin, La. (population 200), 9 was a big age for Wilson. It was when she wrote her first song, “Lucky Me,” while at a sleepover with a friend; when she got her first horse; when she went to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time, where she saw Bill Anderson, Crystal Gayle, Phil Vassar and Little Jimmy Dickens. “My daddy actually still has the ticket stub,” she says. “He put it in the lockbox.” And it was when she first knew that one day she would perform on that stage. “My sister was asleep on the church pew like she could care less,” she says. “I remember eating popcorn and thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this.’ ”
She worked her way through high school as a Hannah Montana impersonator, learning how to entertain audiences at places like St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis and realizing she was “born” to perform in the process. Wilson, who calls herself a “fifth-generation’s farmer’s daughter,” combined that desire with the whatever-it-takes work ethic she inherited from her father. “It definitely has to do with coming from a farming community, getting up and planting those seeds and watching them grow,” she says of the diligence she applies to her career. “I really do view it as ‘I’m a song farmer.’ I just try to take care of what I have, and I take a lot of pride in what we’ve grown.”
By 2011, Wilson had moved to Nashville, where her career as a singer-songwriter started germinating. But with a traditional sound out of step with the pop-dominated country in vogue, she had to survive years of setbacks before reaping her first rewards. She hit a low point in 2014: On her third year living in a camper trailer, career stagnant, the man she was dating impregnated another woman, and Wilson’s producer, who was letting her live in his studio parking lot, died. “It was a lot of dark moments in my life,” she recalls, “and I just felt not worthy.”
(Years later, she would draw on that challenging time when she collaborated with Jelly Roll on “Save Me” and its desperate yearning-for-salvation theme. “I love Lainey’s ability to be vulnerable, and I wondered if that would translate on the song,” Jelly Roll says. “Lainey has such an authentic voice [that] I felt if she could connect with the song, then she could share these lyrics from a woman’s point of view.”)
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Still, even amid those struggles, there were bright spots, like when her pal Luke Combs cut a song they co-wrote for an EP he released before he got signed. (Wilson, who considers herself first and foremost a songwriter, has also co-written songs cut by Chrissy Metz, Flatland Cavalry and Thompson Square, among others.) While working on her songwriting, she also started developing a signature country-hippie look, with bell bottoms and a wide-brimmed hat, and her sound, which combined traditional country with a slight rock edge. Around 2017 — the year she inked her Sony Music Publishing deal and a year before she signed with Broken Bow — she began tagging her social media content with #bellbottomcountry. “I just felt like during that time people were having a hard time getting it — everything from the way that I dress to the way that I sound,” Wilson says. So she came up with her own clear explanation: “country with a flare.”
Half-jokingly, Wilson says she succeeded by outlasting the gatekeepers. “I think we just kind of shoved it down their throat enough to where they’re like, ‘All right, she ain’t going away,’ ” she says.
In an era when women still struggle to get airplay on terrestrial country radio, that has been no small feat. As her popularity has grown, Wilson has flexed different facets of her artistry — and scored radio hits — by both releasing solo songs and featuring on duets with male artists. After “Things a Man Oughta Know” became her first Country Airplay No. 1 in September 2021, she featured on Cole Swindell’s “Never Say Never,” which reached No. 1 in April 2022. The following April, her “Heart Like a Truck” peaked at No. 2, as did “wait in the truck,” her collaboration with HARDY the same month. She then returned to the top spot with “Watermelon Moonshine” and “Save Me” in October and December, respectively.
“Honestly, there was not a grand strategy of alternating singles with collabs,” Loba says. “Quite simply, it has been those acts reaching out to Lainey with great songs she connected with, and the timing has fortunately worked out well.”
As Wilson’s career gained momentum, Loba says that — in addition to making sure her music was where it needed to be — her team focused on stressing Wilson’s authenticity, which was on ample display in her charming, gracious Grammy acceptance speech earlier this year. “She’s not copying anyone else,” Loba says. “At the end of the day, everyone can see her heart and is cheering for her.”
Lainey Wilson photographed on March 26, 2024 at Paradise Pasadena in Pasadena, Calif. Kelsey Randall shirt and pants, Double D Ranch boots, Brit West necklace and cuff, Minnie Lane earrings and Tenee Estelle Trading Co & Modern Myth Jewelry rings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Long-awaited success hasn’t diminished Wilson’s ambition — when asked if she wants to headline stadiums in five years, she answers three — but she is temporarily pulling back on the throttle just a little.
After spending only 15 nights in her own bed in 2022 and then playing 180 shows in 2023, she has trimmed her itinerary to a more manageable 80 concerts in 2024; following brief Australian and European runs earlier this year, she’ll mostly play North American festivals and headlining shows (other than opening for The Rolling Stones in Chicago on June 30) for the remainder of the year. “I feel like you can see the light at the end of the tunnel when you hear, ‘100 less,’ ” she says. But with new opportunities come fresh obligations.
“As this career grows, I feel like there’s a lot of other jobs that come along with it,” Wilson says. Her expanding list of brand partnerships includes Wrangler, American Greetings, Stanley, Tractor Supply and Coors — and she even appeared on the fifth and most recent season of Yellowstone in late 2022. (Wilson doesn’t know what her future on the show holds, but she would like to return if her schedule allows.) This summer, Wilson will open a three-story bar, Bell Bottoms Up, in Nashville’s entertainment district in partnership with TC Restaurant Group.
“She won’t say no, so we have to for her,” Loba says. “Since we signed her, she has not left a moment unscheduled. Every time I see her, the only question I [usually] have is ‘How are you?’ We both come from farm families. We’re not taught how to rest in farm families. From management to agency to label to publicist, I think we’re getting better at creating that space for her.”
“Last year was a hard year,” Wilson says. “It was the best year, and I don’t know if we’ll ever have a year like that again. But everybody was tired by the end of it — not just me, but my whole crew. Everything we’ve said we would do, we did it. And then bigger opportunities would come, and you can’t pass them up either.”
Roberto Cavalli shirt, pants and shoes, Charlie 1 Horse hat, Double D Ranch necklace.
Joelle Grace Taylor
And at a time when she could understandably be focused on her own material, she wants to leave space to work with other artists. With her appearance on “Wilted Rose” off The Black Crowes’ new Happiness Bastards, she became the first act to ever feature with the storied blues-rockers. The group’s Rich Robinson tells Billboard he and brother Chris reached out to Wilson because “her voice is so powerful. You can tell that she really feels what she is singing.”
Wilson says she would “love to collaborate with Victoria Monét,” especially after seeing her perform at Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy party in February. “She just turned it on,” Wilson continues. “At the Grammys, her [victory] speeches were from the heart. I was like, ‘I want to be her friend.’ ” And she hopes to work with new pal Lana Del Rey, though she hasn’t written for Del Rey’s country album that’s due later this year.
As the demands on her time increase, Wilson is leaning into time-honored practices to help her cope. In Australia, she started waking up an hour early to pray, journal and meditate. “I do sound a little hippie-dippy, but it works for me,” she says. “Just kind of starting my day with an attitude of gratitude.”
She vows to do the same when her WME-booked Country’s Cool Again tour starts May 31 in Nashville. “I have no choice because it has made me feel so good and grounded,” she says. When following that routine, “the shows have gone better. I feel more levelheaded. I got to treat myself like an athlete.”
Over the last two years, one word seems to keep coming up around Wilson.
“Whether I’m running into somebody and they’re saying, ‘Man, your life has been a whirlwind,’ or whether the word’s coming out of my mouth, or I open a book and see the word ‘whirlwind,’ it just seems to be surrounding me,” she says. “Whirlwinds cause turbulence that cause chaos. But at the end of the day, you figure out how to come back to the center.” Which is why it’s also the title of her third full-length Broken Bow album, out Aug. 23.
She describes Whirlwind as “the Western sister of Bell Bottom Country,” and lyrically more “introspective” than previous efforts: “I feel like it’s got a little bit more character [and] cinematic storytelling.” Wilson teamed again with producer Jay Joyce (who produced Bell Bottom Country and its predecessor, 2021’s Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’), but in a sign of her increasing clout, her road band plays on Whirlwind instead of the cast of studio musicians who typically appear on country albums. “We’ve played close to 400 shows in the past two-and-a-half years. I knew they could do it,” Wilson explains. “I felt like that’s where the magic was going to come from this time.”
Dolce & Gabbana top, Norma Kamali pants, Charlie 1 Horse hat, Modern Myth hat band, Double D Ranch boots, Alexis Bittar bracelets, We Dream in Colour earrings, Minnie Lane, Modern Myth Jewelry, Boochier Jewelry and Established Jewlery rings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Wilson co-wrote all the songs on the album. While her sound still leans traditional and her voice has an old-fashioned twang, her lyrics usually avoid country’s common nostalgic bent and have separated her music from some of her contemporaries’. Longing for the imaginary good old days — whether in life or her music — isn’t her focus.
“It’s important for me to be proud of where I come from and the way that I was raised, but not dwell on it too much — because who really cares? Let’s take that and move forward with it,” she says. “That’s just how I like to view life. You just got to keep trucking along.”
While she has nothing against a light-hearted ditty — and has written a few herself, including “Hold My Halo” and “Straight Up Sideways”— as a songwriter, Wilson prioritizes depth. “I think about the songs that made me fall in love with country music and made a difference in my life,” she says, citing Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls,” Keith Whitley’s “When You Say Nothing at All,” Reba McEntire’s “Fancy” and Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss’ “Whiskey Lullaby.” “I just think, ‘I’ve got to do that.’ Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a beer-drinking song, but even with that, I think you can dive a little deeper and get people to think a little bit.”
Listeners relate to the authenticity of Wilson’s writing, says her musical hero, Dolly Parton. “Even though Lainey is breathtakingly beautiful to look at, her true beauty comes from deep down where songs are born and written,” Parton tells Billboard. “People feel her heart and soul in what she writes because she knows what they know, feels what they feel and has the gift to present it in words. God bless her. He has and he will.”
The night after her Grammy win in February, Wilson was enjoying a celebratory dinner in Los Angeles with her manager, Red Light’s Mandelyn Monchick; Loba; and Broken Bow executive vp JoJamie Hahr when Loba mentioned his 6-year-old nephew was being picked on at school.
“Lainey goes, ‘I hate bullies. I’m going to go to his school and do show and tell and sing some songs and say what an amazing little guy he is… I can make a difference,’ ” Loba recalls. “She has just won [best country album], and the night after, she’s sitting there concerned about my nephew.”
Wilson is a people-pleaser by nature. Say something she agrees with and she looks straight at you, nods and says emphatically, “100%.” The effect is powerful — and that natural empathy has helped her connect with both fans and fellow artists. “Lainey is someone you can get in the foxhole with and get raw and real,” Jelly Roll says. “She is also a very grounded person, so if I’m ever overwhelmed, I know I can call her.”
Georges Chakra suit, Sam Edelman shoes, House of Emmanuele earrings, Minnie Lane rings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Wilson attributes that down-to-earth sensibility to her upbringing, though she admits she has had to work to maintain it as her star has risen: “I have fought tooth and nail to make sure that I am doing the things that make me feel like me, [like] calling my family at home, checking to see how the farm’s going and see if Daddy has planted his crops, [checking in] on my nephews, hanging out with my boyfriend on the porch and those kinds of things.”
She went public with her relationship with former pro football player Devlin “Duck” Hodges at the 2023 ACM Awards, but otherwise vociferously protects the privacy of herself and those around her. In her personal life, too, Wilson has looked to Parton — who has spoken about the importance of keeping some things to yourself when you’re sharing so much else with the world — as a guide.
“I think that was probably [about] her husband,” Wilson says. “When it comes to mine and Duck’s relationship, there’s going to be some things that we can’t escape and people are going to say and do whatever, but me and him are on the same page about the less we put out there, the less that we’re going to have to deal with people making anything up and saying anything. We want to keep that as sacred as we possibly can between me and him, and so far, it has worked for us.”
Wilson, whose first Broken Bow album features a song called “WWDD” (short for “What Would Dolly Do”), got to spend some time with — and glean some useful advice from — her inspiration last year at Dollywood. “She dove right in,” Wilson says of Parton. “She was like, ‘You got a good manager?’ And I was like, ‘Yep.’ She said, ‘Well, is he an a–hole?’ ” Wilson pointed to Monchick and said, “ ‘She’s a big a–hole.’ And [Dolly] said, ‘That’s all I needed to hear. That’s what you need.’ ”
Kelsey Randall shirt and pants, Double D Ranch boots, Brit West necklace and cuff, Minnie Lane earrings and Tenee Estelle Trading Co & Modern Myth Jewelry rings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Parton has faith in Wilson’s ability to navigate fame’s tricky waters. “In this business, as in any other, you have to sacrifice and compromise to get things done,” she says. “But I believe Lainey, like myself, will never sacrifice her principles and values for a dollar bill.”
Another icon, Brooks, has also encouraged Wilson. After winning CMA entertainer of the year, she anticipated naysayers who believed her ascent had happened too quickly and that even her own doubts would creep in, but Brooks helped silence that inner critic. “He said, ‘I feel like you’ve got the keys to country music and you’re going to be driving it for a while.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, Lord. I hope I don’t wreck this thing,’ ” she jokes. “But when somebody like him says that to you, it does make you feel like, ‘OK, yeah, that imposter syndrome can just go kick rocks.’ ”
With that mindset, it’s easy to believe Wilson can do anything — and to understand why, at the end of the day, she sees herself as a cowgirl: rough and ready, and hanging on to the rollicking ride she’s on. “Being a cowgirl is digging in. Getting up, dusting your jeans off and not being scared to get your hands dirty,” she says. “I’m from a long line of cowgirls.”
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
