“From the struggle to the slingshot,” Lainey Wilson says while reflecting on her career rise and her history-making nine CMA Awards nominations. The singer spoke with American Songwriter and other press on October 27 at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater ahead of the public on-sale of her 2024 Country’s Cool Again Tour and detailed her meteoric rise over the past year.
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Wilson is the most nominated artist at Wednesday’s (November 8) CMA Awards. The country singer/songwriter made CMA Awards history in 2023 when she became the only artist to top the nominations list in her first two appearances on the final ballot. In her second year as a nominee at the awards show, Wilson notched nine nominations including Entertainer, Album, Song, Female Vocalist, and Music Video of the Year.
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“I didn’t think that we could top last year, to be honest,” Wilson, who won CMA Female Vocalist and New Artist of the Year at the 2022 ceremony, says. “I thought that was the year that we would talk about. We topped it somehow. It seems like we keep doing that on accident. It’s a continuous leveling up this year. It seems like as soon as we reach a certain place … we almost have to shift immediately and level up in a way and it’s truly the whole team, everybody. It’s just a continuous leveling-up, which is fun. It keeps it very interesting.”
The singer, who moved to Nashville in 2011, admits that she’s now more appreciative of her early years and struggles as it prepared her for today’s journey.
“With the way of how fast things are moving right now,” she says, “there’s no way that if it would have happened like I wanted it to back in 2011 when I got here, I would not be mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually prepared for any of this because it’s not normal. It’s just not.
“It’s a crazy lifestyle but I feel prepared,” she adds of a career in the music industry. “I feel like I’ve got all my tools in my tool belt and I have to pull them out every now and then and and use them. But, I’m so thankful that I’m feeling that way instead of running around like a chicken with my head cut off ’cause I’ve seen it happen.”
The CMA Awards air live from Nashville on Wednesday (November 8) at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. Wilson is nominated for Entertainer of the Year, Single of the Year (“Heart Like A Truck”), Single of the Year (“wait in the truck”), Album of the Year (Bell Bottom Country), Song of the Year (“Heart Like A Truck”), Female Vocalist of the Year, Musical Event of the Year (“Save Me”), Musical Event of the Year (“wait in the truck”), and Music Video of the Year (“wait in the truck”)
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