Lainey Wilson joins Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to talk about her new album “Whirlwind.” Lainey Wilson discusses her relationship with songwriting, revealing how it made her a better person and what it taught her about herself. She also talks about her emotional tribute to her inspiration, Miley Cyrus.
Tune in and listen to the full episode live for free today, August 21 at 10am PT / 1pm ET, or anytime on demand with an Apple Music subscription HERE.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about the meaning of Whirlwind and “finally” finding a guy
Lainey Wilson: I Love You has been said in a million different ways and we’re all just trying to find ways to say it different, but I don’t think I’ll ever be the love song writer that’s super mushy gushy.
Zane Lowe: Yeah. So what is Whirlwind then? What are you saying?
Lainey Wilson: I finally found a guy that gives me a run for my money. And he’s my biggest cheerleader. He’s just a good person. And he knows how important chasing down a dream is because even when he was a little boy, football was his life.
Zane Lowe: Oh, and you want to know how competitive that is. I asked a professional baseball player once what the percentage of people that go from the kids who all want to play sports because what you do through to actually making money of it in the professional leagues, it’s 0.0001-
Lainey Wilson: I know.
Zane Lowe: 2%. Something crazy like that.
Lainey Wilson: And he did it and he tried out for the Steelers and made the team. And so he achieved what he set out to do. And so he knows. We met at a time where he was still playing with them, but then it all changed. So it was weird. It was like his life was changing as my life was changing and we were going different directions but-
Zane Lowe: What a great test.
Lainey Wilson: Yeah, it was wild. You would think that somebody couldn’t handle that.
Zane Lowe: No, it’s a great test. And that’s what great relationships are, is to realise you can pass the tests that life give to you and it’s better when you figure out the answer together. That’s what it is.
Lainey Wilson: That’s right. So yeah, life for us is a whirlwind. I mean, it’s not normal. We don’t get to see each other as often as some couples do, but we also know that have is very special. And so yeah, for the most part it’s hard, but it’s easy.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about impersonating Hannah Montana and her tribute to Miley Cyrus…
Just watching her on stage last night and how she just… You can tell everything that is coming out of her mouth, she means it. She’s real and she’s lived a lot of life in a short amount of time. And that right there is hard on anybody. She was an inspiration then and she’s still an inspiration to me now…
I mean, and she don’t even realise actually how much that she taught me. I mean, from eighth grade to 12th grade, I impersonated Hannah Montana. I mean, I had the wig, the portable sound system. You all, I would do three or four parties a weekend…
It taught me that this ain’t going to be easy. So even when I moved to Nashville in 2011, I had been touring since the eighth grade. Sorry, mom and daddy, but there were times when I was 14, 15, I was driving around without a license to get to the birthday party. You know what I’m saying?
People made fun of me… That’s another reason why I’d come back home and I’d write a song. If I had not been Hannah Montana and not been hurt by some of the things that people said to me or behind my back or whatever, I don’t know if I would’ve been inspired to write as much music.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about diversity and choosing to love people…
Look, my mom and daddy raised me to love people, love yourself, lift people up, encourage people. Not everybody has to look the same, act the same. That’s what makes the world go round. And I’m not going to hate somebody just because they believe something different than I do. I choose to love people.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about backing herself up as an artist…
Somebody the other day asked me, they said, “Can you believe it? Can you believe everything that’s happening?” And I said, “Yeah, because I’ve always believed it.” And sometimes it’s not that you’re pretending to something that you’re not, but even as a child, I had to pretend to be what I knew that I could always become. You got to put yourself there. You got to put yourself into the shoes of what you knew it is that you could always be.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music how songwriting helped her through childhood and made her a better person…
I dealt with things that all kids deal with, mean girls… And I don’t even know if I would say they bullied me. I’ve seen kids get bullied, but it was hard. I mean, when you’re 13, 14 years old…But you come home and you find this outlet that just helps you get through all the emotions. Of course, dealing with stuff at home behind closed doors and I feel like there’s… Songwriting has been a thing for me too. I’ll observe other people and I will be able to become more empathetic towards people. I’m able to take some of their pain on, which is one of my worst qualities and my best qualities. But I can write from somebody else’s perspective. And I think just songwriting in general has made me a better person.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music what she learned about herself as a writer making this record…
I’m learning how to just trust myself. Not that I haven’t trusted myself in the past, but I’ve also learned that go in different places. I mean, this year we’ve already toured Australia, UK, Europe, and I get to meet so many different types of people from all over. And the more I do that, the more I realise that we all actually have a lot more in common than you think. And I think I’ve learned to just to lean into those things and not be scared to stay true to myself. Of course, stay true to my story and my roots, but not be scared to color outside of the lines. I don’t want to play things safe. I think you should show that you’re growing and changing. And I think for the most part, with this record, we do have that constant thing that has worked for us. But I think we just leveled up.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about her song “Middle Of It”
Lainey Wilson: This song, we had actually just got nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the CMAs. And I had not been at my house in Nashville, and I didn’t have furniture in my house for months and my-
Zane Lowe: Standard musician dilemma.
Lainey Wilson: Yeah. We don’t need a couch, we’re not here. So my friends, The Heart Wranglers came over and they just said, “Let’s do a heart check.” And they’re like, “What’s going on? Where are you at? How you feel? Where’s your head?”
Zane Lowe: You just sat on the floor?
Lainey Wilson: I sat on the floor and I just said, “I feel like I’m just smack dab in the middle of it. It’s a blur to me where it started, where it’s going to end up. I just can’t hardly tell.” And then we just started talking about how that’s really what all this is about anyway. That’s the beauty of it.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music why her album is named ‘Whirlwind’
Lainey Wilson: You have no clue. And that naiveness and that hunger and drive just keeps you going. But I thought that [“Middle Of It”] would be one that I just played for a few of my team members, played for my mama and daddy, and that was it. I didn’t know that it would really serve a purpose for other people.
Zane Lowe: No, it had other plans.
Lainey Wilson: It had other plans. Sometimes you think you know what you’re writing about and turns out you had no clue.
Zane Lowe: Yeah, that’s why I love it, right? Bob Dunn said that all the time, right? He would always refer to the fact that everyone would pour over his words and he’s like, “I don’t know. Ask me in a hundred years. Words change. Meanings change. I don’t know what it means.”
Lainey Wilson: They do. They do and I’m very, very proud of this. And too, just the reason that we ended up wanting to name the record ‘Whirlwind’ is because of moments like that. Because I felt like my life was changing at 190 miles an hour and I was just trying to keep one foot on the ground. But I think those 10 years of nothing happening for me prepared me for my life changing super fast.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about her connections with fans…There was a little girl who came through my line this past week who had a brain injury and the mama told me, she was like, “I put my phone next to her bed when she was in a coma for however long and I left your song Heart Like A Truck on repeat, and that’s what she listened to the entire time. And she ended up waking up.” And it throws me for a loop because when I tell you I have deep connections with my fans, I don’t know if everybody gets to experience that, but I feel like I could pick all of them out from a lineup. I feel like I could look at them and be like, “I met you at this and you told me this about your sister.” And it’s hard to take on a lot of those emotions. And I’ve learned how to feel it and I guess just be proud that they’re willing to share these things with me, and that they feel comfortable enough to share it with me. But I also at times just have to be like, “Okay, you can’t carry it around everywhere you go.”
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about perseverance and choosing to do scary things…
Lainey Wilson: I’ll tell you what, everything that feels scary, has been so worth it. So worth it. I mean, my daddy and mama got me a horse when I was nine years old. And they put me on him. He had never been ridden before. He was just a 2-year-old quarter horse. And he would start bucking and acting crazy, and whatever. And I just vividly remember my parents being like, “Hold on. You better hold on.” I was crying. I’m like, “Put me down. I want to get down.” And I think back to moments like that in my childhood when I feel like I’m about to get bucked off. But eventually he became the best horse I will ever have. He’s almost 30 years old now.
Zane Lowe: What’s his name?
Lainey Wilson: Tex. And I think I just rode him probably for the last time in November because he’s getting old. But yeah, sometimes the scariest things are the best things. That’s what I’ve realised. So I’m going to continue doing things that are scary. That comes with stress. That comes with anxiety.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about being a storyteller…
I don’t know any better. I don’t know any different. I knew that I was going to chase this thing no matter what. Even if still nothing was happening, I’d still be chasing it. I didn’t know exactly what it was going to look like. And I had a feeling at a very early age that I was going to be in this industry. I was going to tell stories. I got bit by the storytelling bug from my parents sitting around the kitchen table and telling stories from their childhood about an alligator or this or whatever it was, and me and my sister would be like, “Tell us that story again.” And every single time we would hear it, it’s like I would hear something knew about it that I didn’t before. I’d laugh in a certain place that I didn’t the time before and I just loved storytelling.
Lainey Wilson tells Apple Music about imagery in country music…
Zane Lowe: Throughout your music, you have certain imagery that elicits a response. It’s beautiful. The way that you paint pictures is brilliant. And the idea of distraction by some form of mild or extreme self-destruction is there as well. This idea of, well, I’m just going to sit at the bar until I don’t feel a damn thing. And so that has been present throughout storytelling in particular within the country music space for a long time. And I think that you’re the person I’d love to talk to about that and what it is about this relationship with alcohol that is love and hate, and I love it when I hate you and I hate it because I love you, but I love it because I love you. […]
Lainey Wilson: What the funny thing is about my songwriting is even when I was 10 years old, I think I was writing my third song I had ever written, and I was writing about tequila and cigarettes. And my parents didn’t even smoke and they definitely didn’t have tequila at the house. They were like, “How do you even know what tequila is?” I’m like, “I don’t. It just sounded good. It just sounded good…”
Alcoholism has ran in my family, and so that’s why there was not drinks at my house growing up. My parents tried to steer clear of it because they knew that their family members had struggled with it and they’re like, “Over my dead body will I have the same problem.”