With Post Malone, Lana Del Rey, and Beyoncé headed South with their new albums, Lainey Wilson only has one thing to say: “Country’s cool again.”
After a year where Morgan Wallen dominated the Billboard Hot 100 and roughly two weeks after Wilson, 31, took home the Grammy for Best Country Album, she commemorated the genre’s resurgence with “Country’s Cool Again.” The song, which hit streaming services on Friday, February 16, is a honky-tonk hoot that’s one part victory lap and one part bewildered look at all the newcomers.
“Everybody wanna be a cowboy / Drive a jon boat, whip a John Deere,” she sings on the chorus, remarking how even city folk want a “backwoods front porch with a tub full of iced down beer.”
“Must be something in the water flowing out of the holler / Blue collar musta caught a new wind,” she adds. “Doggone, dadgummit, didn’t see that coming / Country’s cool again.”
Wilson said in a statement that this new song is “an ode to my upbringing and the story of my journey in this industry — where I have been and where I am now. I’m feeling all the love from country music fans, and I can’t wait to hear everyone singing this song back to me while we’re out on the road this year.”
The new song shares its title with Wilson’s upcoming Country’s Cool Again tour. In October 2023, the reigning Country Music Association Awards’ Entertainer of the Year announced the 35-plus date tour, with Zach Top, Jackson Dean and Ian Munsick as her opening acts.
Wilson spoke exclusively with Us Weekly in October 2023 about country music’s recent popularity. “I think it’s really, really awesome, to be honest with you,” she said. “I mean, it has never not been cool. But I think during the pandemic, people found themselves doing whatever made them feel grounded and feel at home. And I think country music makes you feel at home.”
Wilson told Us she sees similarities between country’s “pop culture movement” of the 2020s with the genre’s surge of popularity in the 1990s. “The other similarity that I find, I think, is country music is about that storytelling,” she added. “I think we’re getting back to a little bit more of that, just like it was in the ’90s.”
There’s no question that it’s currently fashionable to be dressed in fringe, rhinestones and a 10-gallon hat. Beyoncé, 42, dropped two singles, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” during Super Bowl LVIII, revealing that Renaissance Act II will be country in sound and spirit. Malone, 28, has been teasing his country album for months, and Del Rey, 38, announced on January 31 that her follow-up to 2023’s Do You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd will be a country album titled Lasso.
