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August 11, 2025 12 mins

From living in a trailer outside a recording studio to selling out 80 thousand capacity stadiums, Lainey Wilson has made it big. 

For over a decade she’s been one of the biggest country music stars to come out of Nashville, with nine Country Music Association Awards under her belt, as well a Grammy. 

Her career started in 2014 with the release of a self titled album, but it was with the release of her second album ‘Tougher’ in 2016 that kickstarted her career properly.  

Since then, her success has only grown, and now she’s headed to New Zealand for the first time in 2026. 

Despite Wilson’s current stardom, she had a rough start to her career.  

The trailer she lived in had a lot of issues, from flooding and rotting floors to running out of propane and having to sleep in coats to stay warm. 

“I was willing to put up with whatever I had to put up with to be able to do it,” Wilson told Mike Hosking. 

“It didn’t even cross my mind that it was actually hard in the moment.” 

Finding success in the music industry isn’t easy, but Wilson was determined, with a “weird sense of peace” in her heart, knowing that this is what she was supposed to do. 

“I knew at nine years old that I was going to be in Nashville and that I was going to tell stories,” she said. 

“So it was important for me to like, listen to that feeling and see it through.” 

However, despite that gut feeling, she had no idea “telling stories” would look lead to nearly 30 awards, eight number 1 hits, and over 2.1 billion streams. 

“It looks even better than I could have ever imagined.” 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Laney Wilson is one of the biggest names in country
music these days. But it's the old story. It's a
brilliant story from living in a trailer outside the recording
studio and a guy called Luke Colmes used to wander
buy every now and again. And that's singing right together.
These days, she wins award, She phil's stadia all over
the world. She's coming here for the first time next year.
Laney Wilson's with us.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good morning, Good morning to you too, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Can I talk about some football with you? Because I
saw you it must have been so it was Thanksgiving,
so it must have been last November. You're at the Cowboys,
the Giants, NFL. The Cowboys, the Giants.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
That was you, right, that was us, That was us.
That was insane. I think there were a lot of
people watching. I'm glad. I didn't know how many people
were tuned in until I after.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Because, funnily enough, just over this past weekend, I was
watching some of that Hall of Fame in Ohio they
do each year, and who has it been announced this
week is going to be performing next year at the
Hall of Fame week? Exactly me?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I am I'm so excited to. I'll tell you what.
I've got some some family members who are excited that
I'm doing some NFL things. They're like, they think I'm
actually doing something.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Now, now, you're obviously an NFL fan.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
I have to be because I'm marrying a man that
played in the NFL.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
So you talk football a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, we talked football a lot. I'm learning what's offense,
what's defense? No, I love football. I love I love
the atmosphere. I love sitting around and you know, having
friends over at the house and drinking some cold Corse
light and uh yeah, it's I don't know. There's an
energy to it that I definitely love. It feels like

(01:36):
a community thing.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
You bet. Now the tour that took about the two
of the too is on. You'll come to New Zealand.
I'm looking at your schedule as far as I can
work out, you're pretty much on tour between now and
the end of the year. I'm assuming you take Christmas
off and then you hit New Zealand and Australia.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
That's right, that's right, we're coming. I'm so excited. This
is my first time to New Zealand and so I've
been hearing for a while. Actually years ago at CEM
that happens in Nashville every June, I met some people
from New Zealand and it blew my mind that there
were even country music fans over there. So it's about

(02:11):
time that that we make our way now.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Do tell us about that, because Morgan came a couple
of years ago, and I mean he was really blown
away and they just couldn't believe how big it had got.
And Luke Holmes came last year. He said, the same thing.
Does the wood get around the country community in places
like Nashville? You know that maybe what you got going
here is just a bit more global than you guys

(02:34):
might have realized.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
For sure, we all taught. Me and Luke Holmes go
way back, and so do me and Morgan. Luke used
to come over to my camper trailer where I lived
my caravan, I think is what y'all probably call it,
and we would write music together. But we definitely communicate
about it, you know, and we're always like, hey, man,
have you been to have you been there? Have you
done this? You got to go there. I'm telling you,

(02:57):
the fans there, they're on fire. And so I've heard
nothing but great things.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Now, take me back a little bit because this hole.
I was in a campavan caravan thing, and Luke would
come by paint that picture of that caravan. I mean,
were you like down to your last dollar or was
it not quite as bad as that?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
It wasn't nice. It was not a nice one. I'll
tell you that, Mike. It was twenty foot long. It
was a flag staff bumper pool camper trailer caravan, and
I flooded it a few times. The floor was starting
to ride out. It had a lot of issues. The
propane would never last. There was nights I had to
sleep in jackets and coats because my furnace couldn't keep

(03:36):
up with the weather in Nashville. But the funny thing is,
looking back on it now, I just I knew that
I wanted to do this so bad. I was gonna
I was willing to put up with whatever I had
to put up with to be able to do it. It
didn't even cross my mind that it was actually hard
in the moment. Looking back on it now, I'm like, dang,

(03:57):
I did that?

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Did you have it like any date in mind? Because
there must have been difficult periods. I mean, how many
people go to It's story as old as time. Right,
how many people go to Nashville. I want to be discovered?
Some do, most of them don't. Was there a thought
process that maybe it was going to get a little
too hot.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
I knew it was gonna be hard, but I knew
I had a weird sense of peace in my heart
that this is what I was supposed to do. I
knew that I loved storytelling. I knew at nine years
old that I was going to be in Nashville and
that I was going to tell stories, and so it
was important for me to like listen, to listen to
that feeling and see it through. And so I didn't

(04:36):
know it was gonna look like this, but I knew
that I was going to write songs. I knew that
I was going to tell stories, And turns out it
looks even better than I could have ever imagined.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
And that nine year old thing. So your family trip
to Nashville was that the turning point? That was the
time you thought, this is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, I knew at five years old when I sang
a song called Butterfly, Ki says at my kindergarten graduation
on stage, I knew that there was something about being
on stage that I really loved. And I knew that,
like I was a bashful little girl and I would
kind of like hide in behind my mama's legs at
the grocery store. But there was something about being on
stage in that spotlight where I just kind of like

(05:16):
came to life. So I remember that feeling. But then
at nine years old is when I wrote my first song,
and my parents took me to Nashville and we went
to the Grand Ole Opry, and like, I remember who
was playing specifically, I remember where I was sitting. I
remember thinking, like I'm going to be up in that circle.
And it's just crazy to think that. I mean, even

(05:38):
the people that I watched that night, Bill Anderson, Crystal Gale,
Little Jimmy Dickens, Jenny Sealey. Jenny Sey actually just passed
away this past week and I got to go tell
her by, and it's just crazy to think that I
was there at nine years old and I saw her
and she was a part of she was a part
of my journey. She was supposed to be there. I

(06:00):
was supposed to be there that night to watch her
and to have that seed planted to make me feel
like maybe I could do this.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Oh I wanted Lana. I want to go back to
the caravan, you know, and Luke comes. So when Luke comes,
is coming over. He's around there and you're playing in
right hand stuff. Was he well known at that point
or not?

Speaker 2 (06:18):
He was starting to get some buzz. He was definitely
playing some kind of He had like an underground following.
I guess you could say he was playing lots of
bars and selling them out and everybody knew. Everybody was
starting to hear the name Luke Colmbs. But by then,
by the time he got to town, I had been
in town probably about four or five years before him,

(06:41):
and I still did not really have much going on.
But I had heard him sing at a place on
Demumbrian in Nashville called Tenruf Revival, and I remember walking
up to him and I tapped him on the shoulder
while he was playing, and I said, I want to
write with you. And so he actually he came back
to Nashville. He wasn't even living there at that time,
and I was one of his very first co writes

(07:03):
in Nashville. So we still talk about that and we're
like man like just thinking back to those moments. I mean,
we go way back, and I'm so proud.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Of him, but you're sitting in the caravan, and so
he's starting to make it, but you'll not yet. Do
you sit there and go, damn, damn, damn. What is
it he's got that I don't you know?

Speaker 2 (07:22):
It's I definitely saw people move to town and pass
me up left and right. But I still just had
this feeling of just like, maybe I haven't lived enough
life yet to tell the kind of stories that I'm
supposed to tell to the kind of fans that I'm
going to have, And so I just tried to remember that. Now.
Don't get me wrong, there were definitely times where I

(07:42):
was beating my head against the wall, being like, dang,
I need a publishing deal. I got to pay my bills, man,
I want a record deal. I want to be able
to do all the things that my friends are doing.
But I knew that it was going to be worth
the wait.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Now tell me what happened then, because when it started
to blow up, and it did blow up, how do
you have have you handled that?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Do you think the best I could? No? I think
I've actually handled it pretty good. I feel like my
life has completely changed, but I still feel the same
for the most part. I mean, at the end of
the day, you know, when your life changes, you have
to change different parts of your life. That means just
kind of rising to whatever that is and just having

(08:23):
to like level up in certain areas of my life.
And so at the end of the day, it's it
has been a whirlwind, no pun intended, But I feel
like because I've had so many years under my belt.
I've been in Nashville now for fourteen years. I feel
like all those years prepared me for this, and so

(08:44):
I don't know what it would look like if I
didn't have those years under my belt.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
I mean, that's that's a life listen, isn't it's I
think it's true to say that the great times are
better when there have been bad times on the way.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
It makes them that much sweeter.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
I reckon, Now, listen to the thing to know Aboutnashville
took me through this. We had El Dean on the
program the other day, so he's got to buy right now,
You've got to buy now. What is it about Nashville
Is that like when you become famous, the some broker
in town that goes right, you saw X number of
million records, so you got to.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Have a buy, yeah, something like that, something like that.
You know. Whenever I got to Nashville in twenty eleven,
there was not much of that, and I wasn't even
old enough to go down to Broadway during that time.
I was nineteen years old. But it is funny being
able to like look down the street and you see mine,

(09:34):
and then you see Jelly Rolls, and then you see
Al Dean's and you see Miranda's, and it's funny to
see everybody's pop up and I'm one of them.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
There you go, are you hands on? By the way,
do you know what price the cocktails are at your places?
It's just marketing.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
I couldn't tell you literally to the ascent, but I
have a great idea of what it is. Nashville's cheap,
but the drinks are good and they're worth every.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Penny very well. So now there seems in country music
this this camaraderie. I know that, I'm sure there are egos,
but everyone correct me if I'm wrong, seems genuinely happy
with everyone else's success.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Honestly, for the most part, I feel like that's the
that's the vibe. It does feel like one big old family.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
We don't get to see each other all the time.
It might be when we're on the road with each
other or at award shows, but everybody's for the most
part excited for each other and lifting each other up
and encouraging each other. And you know, if there is
a bad egg here and there, they show their colors
pretty quick and we just move on and the good

(10:38):
ones stick together and continue lifting each other up. And
that's what it takes. It's a community.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Now, just bring me up to speak because I'm not
one hundred percent sure of the date. But the Grand
Old Opry, right, so, you were there as a nine
year old. You think one day maybe I'm going to
be there and anyway, the other day you get handed
by none other than Reba McIntyre the invite to pick
I'm a member of the Grand Old Opry. So is

(11:04):
that you already in.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
I'm already in it. Here's the thing. At the end
of the day, you can take whatever you want to
away from me, but you can't take away the fact
that I am a Grand Old Opry. Remember that right there.
That is one of the biggest accomplishments that I will
ever have and to and for Reba to break the
news to me, I mean she is, she's my friend,

(11:27):
and she has blazed some trails for people like me,
and so it's just it's wild. I've always felt like
I was a part of the grand O Opry family,
they just didn't know it, and so I'm glad to
be officially a part of the family.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Well, we look forward to welcoming you to New Zealand,
of course for the first time in the U. You
have great rest of the year and tour and maybe
we catch up when you hear thank you, Lady Wilson.
She is delightful, isn't she. So it is February, there's
something to think about for Christmas, February six and eight.
So it's a Friday and a Sunday spike in Auckland
on these sixth and Sunday eighth at Wolfbank Arena in Christian.

(12:03):
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