Reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year Lainey Wilson performed a medley of her “bell bottom country,” as she calls it, along with some Southern rock during an appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series.
Wilson dove into her 19-minute performance with the barn-burning “Hang Tight Honey,” the second tune off her new album Whirlwind, released Aug. 23, about missing her “honey” while performing on the road.
After the upbeat track, Wilson expressed her gratitude for playing NPR’s Tiny Desk, adding, “This has been a bucket list thing for us,” before jumping into what inspired the title of her third major-label album. “We decided to name the record Whirlwind because, well, that’s what my life has been since we put out my last record Bell Bottom Country, just trying to keep one foot on the ground,” Wilson says. “I feel like my life has changed, but I feel like I haven’t.”
Wilson slowed down the pace with the soulful, mid-tempo song “4x4xU,” written with Aaron Raitiere and Jon Decious, which she described as a song about keeping your loved ones close (it’s Wilson’s latest single shipped to country radio). Afterward, she called on the audience to rock out to “Ring Finger,” with its hit-the-road-Jack groove.
“I got to make sure that I feel like Lainey, the sister, the friend, the dog mama, the girlfriend, so I can be the best version that I possibly can be for the artist,” Wilson shared before jumping into the heartwarming ballad “4x4xU.” “I got to keep living my life so I can keep writing my life.”
A Rolling Stone album review of Whirlwind credited the Louisiana native and Nashville star for bringing the “listener directly into the heart of whatever she might be singing about.” Before her final performance of “Heart Like a Truck,” a hit single off Bell Bottom Country, Wilson called it her “theme song” that chronicles “the scratches and the dents and the bumps” she’s experienced throughout her life.