How Lainey Wilson, an '11-year overnight sensation,' became country music's brightest new star
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Lainey Wilson's first paying gig as a singer was the grand opening of a convenience store in her tiny hometown of Baskin, Louisiana. She was 9 years old, and the job paid 20 bucks.
"My daddy took me up there — no guitar, no microphone, no nothing — and I just sang a cappella," Wilson, now a country star with a pair of No. 1 radio hits to her name, recalls in her thick Louisiana accent. Later she'd sing in the aisles of Walmart after her parents would stop fellow shoppers to show off their gifted daughter with the preternaturally soulful voice. These days you can imagine a video of one of these performances going viral à la Mason Ramsey's famous Walmart yodel. But this was the early 2000s, before every human with a smartphone became an amateur talent scout.
"Where was TikTok when I needed it?" Wilson asks with a laugh. "Would've saved me a lot of damn time."
Minus the internet shortcut, Wilson took the scenic route to her dreams, moving to Nashville in 2011 in a 20-foot bumper-pull camper trailer she called home for years — "The heater couldn't keep up in the winter," she says, "so I was sleeping in coats and four pairs of socks" — as she sang in bars," about the down-home wisdom she inherited from her folks, and "," a glossy toxic-romance duet with Cole Swindell.
