In 2022, country musician Lainey Wilson showed up on set in Montana to film Yellowstone, the show about a ranching family that became a surprise pandemic-era hit. Wilson was already ascending the ranks as a Nashville star when she first took on the role of Abby, a soulful country singer and Dutton family friend, the character showrunner Taylor Sheridan wrote with her in mind. Still, it was Wilson’s first acting gig—if you don’t count her summer job back in high school.

“I guess I had to do a little bit of acting when I impersonated Hannah Montana at birthday parties!” she said. “But when it comes to learning lines, I had never done anything like that. It goes back to Taylor Sheridan believing in me and believing that I could and seeing something in me before I saw it in myself.”

When she comes back for the season finale this Sunday—she’s been mum about the script, but she reportedly filmed a big concert scene back in August—she’ll be returning as a much bigger star. In 2023, she became the first woman since Taylor Swift to win the coveted Entertainer of the Year Award at the CMAs, and in May 2024, Reba McEntire invited her to join the Grand Ole Opry, alongside legends like Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, and Keith Urban, in the country music pantheon.

“It means a lot to me that Reba would even accept the opportunity to do something like that for me. She and I, we’ve created a friendship since then, which is really also weird for me, to say that Reba’s my friend,” Wilson said. “If somebody like Reba thinks that I’m going to stand the test of time, then you’re damn right I’m going to!”

Wilson, 32, is a part of a wave of country musicians born in the early 1990s who take their cues as much from past generations of country stars as they do from the antiestablishment outlaw musicians of the 1970s and 1980s, along with modern rock and pop. Wilson says she’s happy to be a part of a bigger movement brewing in Nashville’s historic Music Row district. “I don’t know about you, but I really don’t think it’s going to slow down anytime soon,” she adds. “It’s steady, just trucking along, and it’s going to be cool to see where country music is in 10 years.”

Vanity Fair: How did you originally get involved with Yellowstone? Do you remember when you realized that it was becoming a sensation?

Lainey Wilson: I guess I just didn’t even realize how important it really was or how beneficial it was until a couple of my songs ended up on the show. Then people would come to shows, even if it was a handful of ’em. They’d be like, “I found you through Yellowstone.” And I’m like, okay, these placements are doing something. Long story short, Taylor Sheridan and I just became friends. We met at a horse-reining competition that he does out in Vegas, and we really bonded over horses. I grew up on the back of a horse, and we had a lot in common, and I think it was just kind of a mutual respect for each other. Two completely different worlds, but we were like, “Hey, I see you.”

He called me a couple years later and was like, “Hey, I’ve got this idea. I want to create a character specifically for you. We’re going to name her Abby. And you’re going to pretty much just kind of be yourself. Maybe you’ll say and do some things that you wouldn’t normally do, but you’re going to be able to dress how you dress and sing your songs.” It was such a blessing because it really put a face to a name. Especially during a time when people might have known the song on the radio, but they just didn’t know who sang it or what they looked like. That’s what Yellowstone did for me.

Were you surprised about the broader impact that it had? Your song “Country’s Cool Again” from earlier this year talks about how everyone wants to be a cowboy now.

I’m telling you, country folk come out of the woodwork! That’s where the idea for “Country’s Cool Again” really started. I was scrolling on TikTok and kept seeing a bunch of kids wearing cowboy hats, riding horses, and wearing Wrangler jeans. I thought, It’s pretty cool to see people want to tap into that world because that’s the way that I grew up, and I’m very, very proud of the way that I grew up.

It’s crazy to see how the Taylor Sheridan world has really contributed to everything happening. It really did something for country music, and it did something for the Western culture in general. Growing up that way, and even putting my cowboy hat on now and putting my jeans on and being around horses or rodeo or whatever it is, I feel at home. People are so sick of things that make them feel anything other than at home. People are craving that authenticity. I think they’re just over the bullshit.

Not to get too heavy, but that makes me think of people who say we’re really divided as a country. We all have different concerns and we’re being pulled in different directions, but I do think we are all craving authenticity. What do you think?

That’s the way that it feels at the end of the day. For me and my crew and the people that I work with, everybody believes different things and nobody’s on the same page about everything. I like that. I feel like I’m learning something. I feel like they’re learning something. I feel like at the end of the day, if you just surround yourself with only like-minded people, then what’s the point?

You decided to go all in on bell-bottoms and big hats back in 2016, right? That was way before this current boom.

As a girl in the business, I just was like, okay, I’m not going to get away with wearing my skinny jeans and my ball cap and getting out there and doing my thing. I’m going to have to do something that kind of sets me apart a little bit. When I think of my music, I want it to represent something fresh but familiar. I would make sure that when I was expressing myself with my music that way, I wanted to make sure that I was also expressing the way that I was dressing that way for it to really make sense. Because at times you do have to serve it on a silver platter and be like, this is the music, this is the look, this is the sound, this is what it is. It’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, but is it yours?

I’m so thankful that my mama always taught me to listen to my gut. When you feel that nudge or whatever it is in your spirit, listen to it. Even though you might feel silly in the beginning, I definitely felt like, well, nobody else is having to do this. But I thought, I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to tell my stories. And sometimes that might mean showing up looking like, “Who in the world is this girl and what is she wearing?” I was willing to do that because I wanted to do this so bad. I wanted to be able to play shows and people sing the songs back to me, and I was willing to put on my bell-bottoms and my hat and be a little different when I needed to.

How did you learn that you needed to market your art like that?

I learned that from being in Nashville for 13 years! I think it was all my time here. It was year seven when I signed a publishing deal. Year eight, I signed a record deal. You know how it is when you’re 16, you’re like, man, if I could just get a car but then you have it and you’re like, if I could just get a boyfriend, if I could just graduate college? I thought, if I could just get a song cut, if I could just get a publishing deal, if I could just get a record deal. Then you realize that, alright, you signed the dotted line. But that’s really when the work begins.

I knew that the kind of music that I write and do was not cool when I first got here. It just wasn’t. And just like fashion things go in style, things go out. But I knew still that I wanted to tell stories and I was like, okay, I think things are going to flip back around. I think there’s going to be a time, there’s going to be a need for this specific sound, and if I can just keep trucking along, hopefully I will find my audience. It’s been one team member at a time for me, it’s been one friendship at a time, one fan at a time, everything. It’s been just really starting from the ground up.

I’m so thankful for that because to tell you the truth, these past couple years have been so insane and my life has completely changed, but I still feel exactly the same. I’m so glad that I’ve been here a while and been around the block so things don’t feel as scary. And at the end of the day, you ask and you shall receive, and sometimes it comes tenfold, but a group of people that love me and care about me, we’re all on this journey together, and that’s a cool feeling.

Your newest album, Whirlwind, talks about feeling caught up in something really crazy! How did you capture that feeling in song?

It was during a time of my life that was constantly changing, and thank God I had songwriting, and I had these tools to where I could sit down and put my thoughts down. During a time in my life that just felt like it was going 90 to nothing, these were the things that just kind of reminded me who I was and why I started doing this in the first place. And as long as you can always go back to that and think back to that, it gets you through whatever it is that you’re going through to get you to the next thing.

Then again, a love song like “4x4xU” makes it seem like you’re in a good place too.

I’m very proud of that song, and we actually wrote that song in 30 minutes, which is crazy for me because I don’t write songs in 30 minutes. Normally it takes me six hours, and then we might come back to it again the next day. But that one just fell out of the sky, and it just felt right and it flowed.

Thinking back to my life and life on the road and making sure that I’m keeping these things that make me feel like I’ve got my feet on the ground for me right now, that is my relationship [with former NFL player Devlin “Duck” Hodges] and I’m in a happy, healthy one. One of our favorite things to do is ride around, and it’s the simple things in life. It’s about keeping your people close and the ones that remind you who you are and what you stand for, and remind you to stick to your guns and stay true to yourself. Those things make me feel at home. So when we were sitting down to write the song, I was like, of course, let’s be cute with it, and let’s be flirty and have a little wink moments, but let’s dig a little bit deeper. Let’s let this person know just how important they really are in your life and how important those simple moments can be.

You and Duck looked really great on the red carpet at the CMAs last month. Is it fun taking him out on the town like that?

It is a very fun experience, and he keeps it fun too. He’s just the kind of person that don’t take life too serious. And the truth is, all of my artist friends, everybody from Luke Combs to Hardy and you name it, they’re more excited to see him than they are to see me. I’m fine with it. At least I don’t have to convince them to like him!

So after a few years of recording, shooting, and touring nonstop, you’re taking a little break and thinking about the next chapter of your career. Does it feel like you’re starting a new era?

I’m living that new era! I feel like new eras are fun, too. It’s just like getting a new haircut, that feeling of shedding old skin and stepping into the new. I do feel like a big shift actually. Everything from playing the Cowboys game last week to hosting the CMAs and getting to be a part of that kind of stuff, like the Grammys in a few months. I physically feel it at times, the shift of just like, okay, here’s another one. It’s almost like you’re just going to have to level up, and then you figure it out, and then you level up again, and then you figure it out there.

This new era for me looks like continuing to find happiness and the most simple things I can think of. And that means being Lainey, the aunt and the sister and the daughter and the dog mama. Just being inspired by living my life, being inspired by the things around me and from the people that I get to meet from all different walks of life. It’s like you were talking about before, how people say we’re so divided. The more people I meet, the more I realize that we’re all actually a lot more alike than you think.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.