Lainey Wilson Doesn’t Want to Be a Pop Star

Photo: Steve Jennings/Getty Images

Lainey Wilson spent her first years in Nashville feeling “too country for country,” as she has become fond of saying in interviews. When she got to town in 2011, her southern-inflected sound was ignored by cautious labels and publishers, but instead of giving in to the pop trends they were looking for, Wilson waited. Finally, one took a chance: Broken Bow Records, which signed her in 2018. In just a few years, she would release a full-length album and earn her first country No. 1. Today, she’s one of the biggest stars in the genre. On her new album, Whirlwind, she marvels at how the landscape has changed since her arrival. “Everybody wanna be a cowboy,” she sings, before smirking mentions of John Deeres and cold beers. “Doggone, dadgum it, didn’t see that comin’ / Country’s cool again.”

Yes, by some metrics, country is cooler than it’s ever been. The two biggest hits of the year are country singles — on top of the four that went to No. 1 on the Hot 100 last year — and stars like Beyoncé and Post Malone have released their own successful country albums. But the country that is cool these days tends to be the glossier stuff, rather than songs like Wilson’s “Country’s Cool Again” with its honky-tonk swing and steel guitar. Malone and Morgan Wallen’s “I Had Some Help” is just as slick as Malone’s prior solo No. 1, “Circles,” while Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is a J-Kwon flip that wears a heavy hip-hop influence. Luke Combs, one of the the genre’s more traditional new crossover stars, reached No. 2 last year with a cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” a song that had already been a pop hit. At a time when more country acts are breaking out of the genre, it feels pointed for Wilson to release Whirlwind, her most unapologetically country album yet.

From the beginning, Whirlwind makes its intended audience clear. The opening song is “Keep Up With Jones,” a jaunty track full of references to George Jones. “Last night I felt like a two-dollar pistol / This morning I feel like I got shot,” Wilson drawls, a wink at one of Jones’s songs and his prolific drinking. By the middle of the album, she hits the barnstorming stride of “Call a Cowboy,” “Hang Tight Honey,” and “Bar in Baton Rouge,” which show off her Louisiana wail and a fiery live band. There’s a plucky love song built on a farmyard metaphor (“Counting Chickens”) and a revenge song with the southern-rock swagger of ZZ Top (“Ring Finger”). In Wilson’s songwriting, cowboys and horses aren’t just country signifiers; they’re what she knows best. And they’re always part of a bigger message.

Wilson’s previous album, 2022’s Bell Bottom Country, has its down-home moments on songs such as “Smell Like Smoke” and “Grease.” But it largely sticks to the expected road anthems and love ballads. On Whirlwind, Wilson is moving further left of the dial as many of her peers are turning the other way. That’s not exactly a surprise from a singer who grew up in a town of 250 and decided she wanted to make country music after a childhood visit to the Grand Ole Opry. Compared with peers like Wallen, Wilson always seemed to have her sights set on stardom within country music. She achieved it after being named Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music in the past year, two of the highest honors in Nashville. (She was also inducted into the Opry over the summer.) Now, from that position, Wilson is making an argument between the lines of Whirlwind: Country stars shouldn’t forget the fans who loved them first.

Country music was in a similar position about a decade ago when Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, and Sam Hunt began to find mainstream success. Wilson’s Whirlwind feels of a piece with Platinum, the album Miranda Lambert released at bro-country’s peak in 2014. That project’s deeper cuts are some of Lambert’s twangiest songs yet, like the silly strummer “Old Sh!t,” the Time Jumpers–backed “All That’s Left,” and the slinky “Two Rings Shy”; even on the pop plays like “Automatic,” Lambert sings about the country life she knew. Bryan’s Crash My Party was the top-selling album of that year, but at the CMAs, Platinum beat it for Album of the Year. It was clear what the country musicians voting on the award were actually listening to.

Now, Wilson is putting herself in the same spot with Whirlwind. More important, as country music’s men again experience the bulk of crossover success, the women are left tending the genre’s flame. Whirlwind comes just a week after Malone released his country album, F-1 Trillion, which, as fun and well studied as it may be, still has a canny layer of polish and an awareness of trends. Wilson clearly isn’t trying to oppose crossover acts — she duets with Malone on F-1 Trillion and sang with Wallen earlier this month. Instead, Whirlwind feels like a chaser, a thrilling reminder of the heights that can still be reached in Nashville by those who continue to invest there. If Wilson is trying to keep up with Jones, as she sings, this is the way to do it. He never had any pop hits either.