Lainey Wilson stopped by The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last night for a little interview and performance to help promote her new album Whirlwind.
Her fifth studio album was released back on August 23rd, and as the title might lead you to believe, the project encapsulates the feeling of Wilson’s life at the moment. It might have taken her a while to break through into the country music industry, but now that she’s reached superstardom, there’s no slowing down for the Louisiana native.
Now that she’s a certified country music star, she gets to do things like “Squat and Shots” with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show:
.@laineywilson shares her pre-show ritual: the squat & shot 🥃 #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/74Yy19SDnI
— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) September 11, 2024
This was the first time that Lainey Wilson had been on the late night program as a guest and a performer. She’d been on the show previously, but only to perform a song for the closing of the show. Last night, Lainey got to sit on the iconic Tonight Show stage and talk about her life with host Jimmy Fallon.
The conversation ranged all the way from her recent successes to her humble beginnings as a Hannah Montana impersonator. At one point, Fallon said he had heard that the reigning ACM Entertainer of the Year used to play in the aisles of Walmart (she was the OG yodeling Mason Ramsey), and Wilson nodded her head to confirm that she did as the country star began to elaborate on all of the weird places she performed when she was younger:
“I would play anywhere they would let me play. I’m talking about nursing homes, flatbed trailers. Anywhere that… my parents would be like, ‘Hey Lainey, sing that song you just wrote last week’ for anybody. And I’d just do it.”
Sounds like she was a performer from the very get-go.
Fallon followed up with a question about when Lainey officially got started as an entertainer, and the “Hang Tight Honey” singer basically said that she’s been making music for over 20 years:
“I wrote my first song at nine years old and I got bit by the bug. I think it’s because I’m from a town of 180 people – Baskin, Louisiana.”
You can hear more about Lainey Wilson’s start in music (and even hear her sing a snippet of one of the very first songs she ever wrote) in the interview below:
