Now that Lainey Wilson has introduced fans to her beau of more than two years, the 31-year-old says she’s ready to further express her love for him with new music.
LISTEN NOW: Lainey Wilson says new music will show a different side of her
Wilson surprised fans when she walked the carpet at the 2023 ACM Awards last May alongside former NFL player, Devlin “Duck” Hodges — her boyfriend of two years. Wilson had kept their relationship under wraps until that night and now, she’s ready to share their love with the world.
“I am in love… I’m excited to share this side of my life,” Lainey confirmed before sharing her most-recent songwriting is reflecting that. “That’s weird for me, that I’m able to write those kinds of songs. I will say, I don’t think I will ever be the kind of love song writer that’s going to be mushy, gushy, like pour my heart out to ya. I think it’s going to be more of the ‘I’m a strong woman and I gotta man who’s OK with it kind of thing.’”
That’s exactly what Lainey appears to have as she continued on to explain Duck’s support of her career and the respect he has for her chasing a dream. “He knows what it’s like to start from the ground up,” she said, sharing he did the same as he walked on the Pittsburgh Steelers. “He knows what it’s like to have a dream at a very young age… we understand each other. He knows how important this job is to me and this business and he knows I have worked my butt off to be here and ain’t nobody gonna stop me from doing what I need to do.”
That’s never been more clear as Wilson recently made CMA history topping the nominee list for a second year in a row with nine nods at the 57th Annual CMA Awards. This includes a nom for the night’s biggest award, Entertainer of the Year, which recognizes the approximate 160 live shows Wilson has played in 2023 alone.
“We have played every kind of show you can imagine this year,” she reflected. “We started out doing a club tour and then we did the Luke Combs stadium tour and then now we’re out on the road with HARDY. By the time it’s said and done, we’ll have played 160-something shows for the year.”
That’s a lot of shows, and if you know Lainey — you know it’s a lot of bell bottoms as well. Wilson’s love for bell-bottom pants has been apparent since she got her start in the genre and has taken on a life of it’s own as she is never seen without them and has even claimed the space, “Bell Bottom Country” with her latest album. Lainey shared her love for the pants goes way back to her childhood.
“They were blue leopard print,” she said while reminiscing on her first pair of bell bottom pants. “When I put those blue leopard print bell bottoms on I felt sassy, I felt like I could do anything. I didn’t want to take them off, my mama at some point was like, ‘You gotta take ‘em off, we gotta wash ‘em,’” she laughed.
The invincible feeling and unique look the pants gave her continued into adulthood and according to Wilson, helped her stand out as she worked to bust her way into the Country music scene. “2011 is when I moved to Nashville, a few years of being in Nashville, I realized pretty quickly that just being a decent singer-songwriter as well as being a girl is not enough,” she said. “I realized I’ve got to do something that makes people raise their eyebrows a little bit… and for me it was putting those bell bottoms back on.”
Whether you credit the bell bottoms, her stellar talent, or a little bit of both, Lainey has proven to be a force in the Country world and is currently sitting at the top of the charts with her single, “Watermelon Moonshine.”
“This song is something that I feel like everybody kinda wants to feel that nostalgic feeling of like, when it seemed like nothing else in the world mattered. This song takes me back to that time and that moment in my life when I felt like, ‘This is it, I just want to bottle it up.'”
Lucky for us, all that emotion and nostalgia is bottled up and there anytime we need it as “Watermelon Moonshine” plays across Audacy stations nationwide and sits as track 4 on Lainey’s Bell Bottom Country album.
Hear more about the current single, new music in the works and why she still gets nervous before taking the stage by checking out Lainey’s full conversation with Katie Neal above.