Lainey Wilson on Giving Back, New Music and Wedding Plans

Transcript

00:00After a whirlwind few years, Lainey Wilson seems to have it all, and she's more than happy to

00:05share it with others. We sat down with the country star for this week's cover story.

00:09Lainey is one of the most popular female country artists in a decade, releasing five studio albums

00:14and will be featured in the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover's Reminders of You. Wilson says

00:19nothing would be possible without philanthropy. In 2023, as her career was taking off, she founded

00:24the Heart Like a Truck Fund under the Middle Tennessee Community Foundation to support causes

00:29that can change people's lives. She tells us kindness might be one of my superpowers. Kindness

00:35has definitely gotten me a lot further than the opposite. She adds paying things forward feels like

00:40the only appropriate response for all the good that music has done in my life. Now the singer grew up in

00:46the small town of Baskin, Louisiana and tells us I learned a lot about the importance of community

00:51and taking care of each other. From the time I was a little girl, I got to see it from both my

00:55family and church. I'm very proud of where I come from. She adds, where I'm from, giving back wasn't

01:01something you just talked about. It was something you did. And the country music family has taught me

01:06that too. They just bond together. Now things changed quickly for Lainey in terms of her fame.

01:12And she said it really hit her when in just a few months, she went from selling 87 tickets at a show

01:17to 50,000. She said, before I went on stage, somebody came on the bus and was like, you're not

01:22going to believe how many people are out there. That was one of the first moments for me where I

01:28was like, click your boots together. We're not in Baskin anymore. And when she is not working on new

01:33music or giving back, she is spending time with her new fiance, Delvin Duck Hodges, telling us that

01:39they need to start wedding planning. She says, I've been so busy this year that we're like, we're going to

01:44figure it out for sure. He's such a good dude. He's my best friend. He's my biggest cheerleader.

01:49We lift each other up. He understands that this life is full of a lot of late nights and travel,

01:54and we might be ships passing in the night, but he's always my rock through it all.