Lainey Wilson is seeing the fruits of her decade-long labor in Nashville. The reigning Entertainer of the Year recently celebrated the opening of her Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibit, “Lainey Wilson: Tough As Nails.” On display through June 2026, the collection takes visitors on Wilson’s journey from Hannah Montana impersonator to one of modern country music’s most impactful voices. Throughout her career, the Louisiana native has been vocal about the support she received from other female artists like Miranda Lambert, Dolly Parton, and Reba McEntire. Recently, she shared some wisdom imparted by another trailblazing woman in music, Melissa Etheridge.
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How Lainey Wilson Stopped Chasing Perfection Onstage
By the time Lainey Wilson broke through with her 2020 single “Things A Man Oughta Know,” she’d been grinding in Nashville for nearly a decade. And even after nine CMA trophies and 16 from the Academy of Country Music, the “4x4xU” singer, 33, still can’t always shake the notion that she should always be doing more.
For Wilson, the hardest part of her success isn’t performing six nights a week or walking the red carpet at awards shows. It’s giving herself grace when a performance doesn’t meet her (admittedly astronomical) standards.
“There for a while, I was walking off the stage… I think it was just because I had done so many shows in a row, and I was so tired and beating myself up that I couldn’t really see it for everything that it was,” Wilson told Bobby Bones during a recent appearance on his show Bobbycast.
[RELATED: Lainey Wilson Teams Up With Ernest For Dreamy Duet During Opening Night of Whirlwind Tour]
Thanks to some advice from two-time Grammy winner Melissa Etheridge, the “Watermelon Moonshine” singer says she now walks off the stage “in a much healthier way.”
“She told me about the 80% rule,” Wilson recalled. “She said, ‘Get out there and instead of giving it, like, 190% and feeling like you have to get up there on that stage and, like bleed out… If you do the 80% rule, it gives you that, like, 20% window and wiggle room to not let yourself down so much.’”
On Staying Grounded
Fortunately for Lainey Wilson, her fiancé, former NFL quarterback Devlin “Duck” Hodges, is always there to remind the country star of her humanity.
“He definitely helps me keep my feet on the ground,” she said, adding, “I want to make sure that I’m like taking all the opportunities that I can, but I also need to make sure that I’m taking care of my people and my relationships and creating those memories. He reminds me how important that is.”
Featured image by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for SiriusXM
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