Lainey Wilson has a gift for capturing resilient women through her songs. Perhaps no two songs prove this better than her solo hit, “Heart Like a Truck,” and her attention-grabbing collaboration with HARDY on “Wait in the Truck.” The singer draws a line between the two, noting how the woman she sings about in “Heart Like a Truck” is also the character she plays in “Wait in the Truck,” which was co-written by HARDY, Jordan Schmidt, Hunter Phelps, and Renee Blair.
Videos by American Songwriter
HARDY pitched her the song around the time she was recording “Heart Like a Truck,” and while there was some hesitation from members of Wilson’s team about releasing two songs about a truck at the same time (“Wait in the Truck” was released three months after “Heart Like a Truck”), Wilson knew the songs told a powerful story in tandem. “[Both songs] go hand in hand,” she observes. “When you hear the story behind ‘Wait in the Truck,’ the girl has a heart like a truck to get through it. It’s all one in the same story.”
Though she wasn’t involved in the writing process for “Wait in the Truck,” Wilson did co-write “Heart Like a Truck” with two of her longtime collaborators Trannie Anderson and Dallas Wilson. “Heart” was released as the lead single from her 2022 album, Bell Bottom Country, and Wilson says she “knew it was special” and had to be released as a single.
“It was one of those things where I think a lot of people during that time were trying to cover up the way that they were feeling during the pandemic, and we were trying to do that at first when we were writing the song,” she explains at a recent Nashville press event about the song that they were originally writing from a “tough, gritty” viewpoint. “We stopped ourselves because we’re very honest with each other and we said, ‘Are we being honest with where we’re at right now in this situation? And the truth was, we weren’t. So we started getting vulnerable with it and it was really coming from a real place.”
[RELATED: Lainey Wilson Announces Her New Charitable Foundation, the Heart Like a Truck Fund]
Growing up in Louisiana, Wilson often rode in trucks, which is where she fostered her love for country music. While the song’s central character is a truck, the main theme of the song is about resiliency and integrity, as expressed through such lyrics as, I got a heart like a truck / It’s been drug through the mud / Runs on dreams and gasoline / And that ole highway holds the key.
“I spent a lot of my life in the back of a truck, it’s where I fell in love with country music…it’s a very big part of my life, I learned how to drive in a truck, but this song has nothing to do with that,” she describes of the “relatable song.” “This song is about going through those tough times and embracing those tough times, the scratches and the dents and the bumps along the way.”
Both “Wait in the Truck” and “Heart Like a Truck” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, and the Top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images
