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For Lainey Wilson, country music was never something she discovered.
Growing up in the tiny farming community of Baskin, Louisiana, she was simply raised on it, in it & around it. Looking back on her childhood during a new Take 5 interview with Zan Rowe, Wilson explained, “I didn’t even realise that country was a genre, I just thought it was a way of life.”
It’s a line that probably explains Lainey better than almost anything else, either she or anyone else has ever said when describing her or her music.
Her dad was a farmer who played guitar and piano by ear, her mum sang at church and country music was constantly playing around the house, in the truck and on the farm. Wilson has previously said that there wasn’t much to do in Baskin apart from sitting around the kitchen table sharing stories, something she believes eventually shaped her own love of songwriting.
Growing up, Wilson listened to everyone from Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw and Dolly Parton to Hank Williams, Buck Owens, Bill Anderson and Bob Seger, while trips to local festivals exposed her to bluegrass gospel from an early age.
Tim McGraw in particular made the idea of becoming a country star feel less impossible. McGraw grew up not far from Wilson, and she has recalled her family pointing out the house he was brought home to after he was born. Her step-grandmother had even babysat him. “This guy is from here and he did it,” Wilson remembered thinking. “And if he did, I can do it too.”
By 9, Wilson had written her first song and made her first trip to Nashville. By 11, she was learning guitar, and as a teenager she spent years performing as Hannah Montana, often opening her own shows as Lainey Wilson so she could slip some of her original material into the set. At 19, she finally moved to Nashville in a camper trailer, parking it outside a recording studio for the first three years she lived there.
This "country is a way of life” mantra has followed her ever since. It’s what made her eventual partnership with Wrangler feel so innate & full circle.
Announcing the collaboration in 2024, Wilson said, “Wrangler was my childhood”, explaining that her parents had dressed her in the brand before she could even walk. “We were a Wrangler family, and we still are. It is really just a way of life for me and my family.”
The partnership has since grown into a multi-season collaboration, with the collections pulling directly from Wilson’s own story, from the bell bottoms that have become part of her identity to designs inspired by her family's Louisiana farm and the 90s country music she grew up listening to.
Her current Wrangler range even includes a pair of jeans called the ‘Baskin Blue Boot Huggers’.
Long before ‘Country’s Cool Again’, the Yellowstone appearances, Grammys and arena tours, it seems Lainey Wilson had already worked out what country meant to her, it was infact all she’s ever known.
