Lainey Wilson Is a Total Vibe

Lainey Wilson lives by a mantra: "What would Dolly do?" Pricked by a stray cactus spine on the set of her PEOPLE photo shoot in late May at a home outside Nashville, Wilson remains unfazed. "It ain't gonna kill me!" says the country singer, channeling her idol, the unstoppable Dolly Parton.

Every time she's faced a setback—from endless record label rejections when she first moved to Music City nearly 12 years ago to her father’s monthslong hospitalization because of a fungal infection in 2022 while she was filming her first acting role on Paramount's hit show Yellowstone—Wilson, 31, has found a way to push forward. “There’s been a lot of moments that should have taken me out,” she says. “But I’m always able to pull myself up by my bootstraps.”

Propelled by the flare of her signature bell-bottoms (which inspired the title of her latest album, 2022's Bell Bottom Country), Wilson isn't just getting by these days—she’s soaring. Growing up, Wilson worked alongside her dad Brian, a fifth-generation farmer, on corn and cotton fields in her small hometown of Baskin, Louisiana (population approx. 200), and listened to country greats like Glen Campbell, Tim McGraw and Patsy Cline with her family. She wrote her first song at 9 years old, but it was a childhood trip to Dollywood, of course, that cemented her dreams of performing.

Still, it took more than a decade—and plenty of odd jobs (Hannah Montana impersonator included)—for her hustle to pay off. “Somebody told me back when I signed my first [record] publishing deal, ‘Lainey, it's gonna feel like you are being drug behind a ski boat for years,' " she recalls. " 'Eventually, one day you're gonna stand up—and then you're gonna be off to the races.' "

They weren't kidding. With the release of her heart-filled single, “Things a Man Oughta Know,” Wilson became an overnight country sensation when the song hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in 2021. “I grew up in a town where country music is life: We eat, sleep and breathe it. I have loved it with my entire heart, and I feel like country music is finally starting to love me back," says Wilson, who picked up four awards, including album of the year and female artist of the year, at the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards last month.

Wilson's the first to acknowledge the past year has been a "whirlwind." She's currently in the studio working on her third album with her label—which she notes is very much inspired by her boyfriend of two and a half years, former NFL player Devlin “Duck” Hodges, 27—and traveling the country for music festivals while also opening for Luke Combs on tour. But singing with her heroes (she recently recorded a cover of "Mama He's Crazy" with Parton for a forthcoming Judds tribute album) has only reinforced who she is. “I’ve always just wanted to make people feel something with my music—whether it makes you want to laugh, cry or drink a beer,” she says. “For years I've tried to prove a lot of people wrong, but the truth is there's a lot of people that I need to prove right.”

Below, Wilson shares a few things everybody oughta know about her—to the tune of Parton’s songs.

“Big Dreams and Faded Jeans”

"Just my old guitar and me/ Out to find my destiny/ Nashville is the place to be/ For big dreams and faded jeans”

Wilson first set her sights on Nashville on the way home from a family vacation in Gatlinburg, Tenn., when she was 9. “I remember on the car ride, I had this overwhelming feeling that telling stories is what I was supposed to do,” she recalls. “Being from a town of 200 people, there's not a whole lot to do except sit around the kitchen table and tell stories—the kind of stories that get better every single time that you hear 'em. That’s exactly how country music is for me.”

While in middle and high school, Wilson took a gig impersonating Hannah Montana. “I would do three or four events a weekend—birthday parties, fairs, festivals, you name it,” she says. After five years, Wilson decided to hang up her Hannah Montana wig following a performance at her local St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

“It was one of the most rewarding moments I’ve ever had in my life,” she says. “I had my little portable sound system set up, and all these kids come in. This little girl had had brain surgery a few days before the show, and I remember her dad wheeling her to the front. I was singing 'The Climb,' and she knew every single word. I handed her the microphone, and she sang the entire song. Everybody in the building was crying. My wig was hanging on sideways! Hannah Montana was a complete wreck.”

“When the song was over, she handed me the microphone back, and she meant to say, ‘Hannah Montana, you're my star.’ But she said, ‘Hannah Montana, I'm your star,’ ” recalls Wilson. “I said, ‘You know what? You are.’ I believe I was probably 17 or 18 years old at that time, and I just knew, ‘I've gotta figure out how I can do this the rest of my life.’ ”

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“Down on Music Row”

"Down on music row/ Down on music row/ If you want to be a star/ That's where you've got to go”

On Aug. 1, 2011, Wilson moved to Nashville in a Flagstaff camper trailer in pursuit of her dreams and stayed in it for three years—an experience that's stuck with her. (When a fly buzzes past her during this interview, she even cracks a joke about how she feels like she’s back in her trailer. “They were like, ‘Get the flies in here!’ ” she quips.)

During her early years in Nashville, “I would walk up and down Music Row in Nashville and pass out my demos and my CDs,” she says. “I had a lot of folks slam the door in my face. There were some hard times, there were some rough days, times when I should have probably packed it up and went home, hooked the trailer to the back of the truck and said, ‘I can't do this.’ But I've always had a really weird sense of peace knowing that this is the only thing I know how to do.”  

Looking back, Wilson is thankful for that time of growth—flies and all. “I'm very grateful that it has taken me a long time [to get here],” she says. “There are moments where I wish things would've happened a little sooner, but the truth is I wasn't ready. I think time was supposed to be a big part of my story.”

“Backwoods Barbie”

“I've always been misunderstood because of how I look/ Don't judge me by the cover 'cause I'm a real good book/ So read into it what you will, but see me as I am/ The way I look is just a country girl's idea of glam”

When Wilson moved to Nashville, “I realized really quick that as a female in country music, it does not matter if you have a decent voice or if you’re a decent songwriter. You gotta do something that is outside the box to get noticed,” she says. “I thought, ‘What could I wear that would make me feel like I could take on the whole dang world?’ For me, it was bell-bottoms.”

Wilson traces her love for bell-bottoms back to age 8 or 9, when her mom Michelle bought her a pair with blue leopard print.

“It was to the point where my mom was like, ‘Lainey, you gotta take 'em off. We gotta wash 'em,’ ” she remembers. “But I loved them. I loved the way that they made me feel. They made me feel sassy and like I could do anything.”

For the past eight years, Wilson says she’s worn pretty much nothing but bell-bottoms—including to award shows (she opted for a silk bell-bottom jumpsuit for the ACMs).

“There’s no such thing as too many,” she says. “We still keep it fun. We still keep it interesting. I feel like I get to get up every single morning and get to express myself however I am feeling that day, just like writing a song.”

Looking to the future, Wilson doesn’t think she’ll ever “completely” give up her signature look. “I'll probably be 90 years old and still wearing bell-bottoms—I don't think anybody's ever seen my ankles!” she says.

Parton's proclivity for long sleeves has fans guessing about whether she's hiding ink underneath, and Wilson is quick to jokingly shut down similar speculation: “I know, everyone’s like, ‘She’s got tattoos under there.’ I’ll show y’all I don’t!”

 “Eagle When She Flies”

“She's a woman, she knows how to dish it out or take it all/ Her heart's as soft as feathers, still she weathers stormy skies/ And she's a sparrow when she's broken/ But she's an eagle when she flies”

The day Wilson wrote “Things a Man Oughta Know,” she was hungover and almost called one of her cowriters Jason Nix to tell him she was sick, she admits. But something in her told her to show up.

“When Jason said his idea for ‘Things a Man Oughta Know,’ I was like, ‘Now, I like this. Let’s figure out how to write it from a female perspective,’ " she says. “It became about the things my parents taught me growing up, like the characteristics to look for in myself and when choosing friends and boyfriends.”

Though the song was shelved for some time, Wilson had a feeling before cutting her first major label album, Sayin' What I'm Thinkin', that “Things a Man Oughta Know” should be on it.

“I was on Dickerson Pike in Nashville when I got this overwhelming feeling—I get a lot of those—that I was supposed to record it,” she says. “I’m so thankful that I listened to that, because that was the song that introduced me to a lot of people. That song truly is who I am and the way that I was raised.”

When it went No. 1, “I was ready,” Wilson says. “People say you get your whole life to write your first record. But I got to write 300-plus songs during the COVID pandemic, and the truth is I feel very fortunate I got a lot of time at home to write my second record. I was overly prepared, and I'm about to be working on this record, and I still feel the same way. I'm like, 'I need to write 100, 150 songs to choose 12.' I want to show that growth through my lyrics, the singing, the stories, all of it.”

“Daddy’s Working Boots”

“Dear lord above, I know up there my daddy's got a mansion/ And a great reward that's long been overdue/ And when it comes my daddy's time to be with you in heaven/ Won't ya let him walk your golden streets/ In a pair of brand new golden boots?”

Before Wilson took on her acting role in Yellowstone, her songs were featured in the show's early seasons. “What Yellowstone has done for the western way of life has been a huge turning point,” she says. “I feel like what I do was not cool three or four years ago.”

Yellowstone also helped put fans put a face to the voice on the radio, especially when she appeared in the first half of season 5 in 2022 playing the musician Abby.

“[Co-creator] Taylor Sheridan called me and he said, ‘Lainey, I got this idea. I want you to play a musician, but I want you to pretty much be yourself and wear your bell-bottoms and sing your own music,’ ” she recalls. “It was a huge opportunity for me to share my music with the world.”

When Wilson first got to set, she wasn't sure what to expect from the actors who played some tough characters onscreen.

“I'm like, ‘I'm about to meet Beth—she's probably gonna put me in a headlock,’ ” she says with a laugh of Kelly Reilly, who plays matriarch Beth Dutton. “But she didn't; she made me feel so welcome. She lifted me up, she encouraged me, she gave me some advice. My very first scene was with her, and she told me, ‘I would’ve never known this was your first time acting. If you had not told me, I would have thought you’d been doing this forever.’ Hearing things like that from Kelly made me feel like, ‘You know what? I can do this.’"

Still, Wilson was shaken when her father was hospitalized after a stroke while she was on-set. He required nine different surgeries, including the removal of his left eye.

“It was really, really bad,” she says. “All the doctors had told us, ‘This is not looking good.’ I remember they had hired a few hundred extras to be on-set, and I was supposed to be there the next day, and I was in Houston with my daddy, and I just didn't wanna go.”

When she thought her dad was sleeping, Wilson talked about the situation during a phone call in his hospital room. She soon found out he was eavesdropping.

“He opened his eyes and said, ‘Did I hear that you're not going out to film Yellowstone?’ I said, ‘Daddy, I can't leave you.’ He said, ‘You better go, and you better not come back until the job is done,’” she says. “That is the girl that he raised. So I headed that way and did it. It’s that mentality right there that I feel has gotten me to this place.”

Wilson went ahead with filming, and by November 2022, she was able to bring her dad along with her to the Country Music Association Awards. “It was a miracle,” she says, growing emotional. “He's not supposed to be here, and he is. When he was a little boy, he used to roll a picnic table out on the side of the highway and stand on top of it with his guitar and pretend that he was Glen Campbell for the cars passing by. So, he's getting to live vicariously through me, and I'm so glad and so thankful that he is around to see the things that are happening right now. He's real proud.”

As for her fate on the second half of the fifth season of Yellowstone (expected to premiere in November), Wilson says even she is in the dark.

“I have realized that the TV world is even crazier than the music world,” she says. “I'm like, ‘Taylor Sheridan, you gotta let me know what's going on, bro.’ I'm excited to see what happens. There’s no doubt the rest of season 5 is gonna be money.”

"Coat of Many Colors"

"My coat of many colors/ That my momma made for me/ Made only from rags/ But I wore it so proudly”

To pair with her bell-bottoms, Wilson has a closet full of tops—90 percent of which are “thrifted and vintage.”

“I love going to the cities where I'm playing shows and finding what kind of local thrift shops are there,” she says. “It keeps life on the road interesting.”

One of her favorites is a top from the early '80s that her mom gave to her. “It's got big shoulder pads and fringe, and it’s cinched in at the waist,” she says. “It’s really good quality. I remember seeing it hanging up in her closet when I was a little girl. It's just a piece she held onto for years. When I really started diving into the fashion side of things, she was like, ‘I think it might need to be yours now.’ "

Like her bell-bottoms, Wilson says, “the more the merrier” when it comes to accessories (her go-tos are hats and unique jewelry pieces). “I love turquoise, and I love anything that makes a statement,” she says. “A lot of the rings I wear are Mud Lowery. He’s hooked me up with a lot of different pieces. There’s one ring he made me that has my initials on it, and I have another ring that my cowriters on ‘Heart Like a Truck’ bought me with a truck that swivels on the ring. I wear them every single day.”

“Puppy Love”

"Puppy love, puppy love/ They all call it puppy love/ I'm old enough now to kiss and hug/ And I like it, it's puppy love”

As she works on her next album, Wilson says, the thing inspiring her the most right now is her “healthy relationship” with Hodges, whom she calls “one of my biggest cheerleaders and champions.”

The couple started dating in 2021 after meeting through mutual friends in Nashville. “We went to this old place called Silverados, and it had free beer and wine from 5 to 10 p.m.,” she says. “I was like, ‘This boy likes to ball on a budget too. This is gonna work out.’ ” (At one point during the chat, Wilson admits she’s a “tightwad,” and says her only big purchase thus far has been her 30-acre farm.)

After two and a half years together, Wilson and Hodges made their red carpet debut at the 2023 ACMs, where she revealed her relationship publicly for the first time.

“I said, ‘We gonna see if you’re in it for the right reasons.’ Turns out, he is,” she says. “Somebody said how funny it was watching him high-five all of my artist friends at the ACMs, and I said, ‘Those are his friends!’ He’ll FaceTime me, and he’ll be with HARDY and Morgan [Wallen] and Luke [Combs], and I’m like, ‘Stop stealing all my buddies.’ They’ll always be out golfing and drinking a beer. I don’t have to convince anybody to like him. He’s a very lovable person.”

Now that the cat’s out of the bag with her relationship, “it feels really good to talk about it,” she says. “Duck is the kind of dude who high-fives me on the way in the door and on the way out and says, ‘Go get it.’ He knows how important this dream is to me. I was never really able to write love songs, because I don't know if I had actually felt it, but I'm writing me some love songs now. I’m grateful for him.”

“White Limozeen”

"Now she's really ridin' high/ She's a woman of the world/ But deep inside she never changed/ She's the same old down home girl"

Looking to the future, “I have a lot of plans and a lot of hopes for my 30s,” Wilson says. “I feel like my 30s are gonna be a lot better than my 20s were. I feel comfortable in my own skin. I feel like I've got a story to tell, and I want people to see my journey and know that they can do anything they set their mind to.”

And she’ll always have home to bring her back down to earth. “When I go back home, they treat me like the same old lady,” she says. “They're like, ‘You ain't that cool. So don't act like you're too cool.’ They keep me humble.”

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