Lainey Wilson conquered country music with 2022’s Bell Bottom Country, earning the Louisiana-born artist her first Grammy Award. Its follow-up, Whirlwind, became an immediate crossover hit when it debuted in August 2024. With songs like “Hang Tight Honey” and the Miranda Lambert collab “Good Horses,” Wilson appears on track to continue the monumental success she found with Bell Bottom Country. And recently, the reigning Entertainer of the Year revealed her personal favorite song on the album.
Lainey Wilson Wrote This Song Specifically for Arenas
Before fame, Lainey Wilson would perform in Walmart for anyone willing to listen. You need a ticket to hear her sing live these days—and good luck, because she’s been selling out stadiums left and right.
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Wilson kept touring in mind while making Whirlwind. “I told my band, ‘I want to feel that thump,’” she said during a recent appearance on the Broken Record podcast. “Like, these are the songs that I wrote for arenas and stadiums. Think about that when you pick up your guitar and when you’re playing your drums… I want to feel that thing.”
The country star, 32, said everything really came together on the album’s second single, “4x4xU.”
“That one feels right,” she said. “We wrote that song in 30 minutes. I don’t normally write songs in 30 minutes. I write for six hours and maybe come back to it the next day, because I just want to go through it with a fine-toothed comb. But this was not one that I felt like I needed to do that.”
Lainey Says Her Boyfriend Makes Writing Love Songs “Very Easy”
In the opening lines of “4x4xU,” Lainey Wilson describes herself as “the kind to take the keys.” Don’t sit in a shotgun seat / ‘Less I want to / And you make me want to, she sings.
“You” is former NFL player Devlin “Duck” Hodges, Wilson’s boyfriend of three years and the inspiration behind many of Whirlwind’s more upbeat tracks.
“I’ve never written a love song in my life until the last two and a half years,” she previously told American Songwriter. “He makes it very easy for me to do that.
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