Lainey Wilson talks "Heart Like A Truck" and her friendship with Luke Combs
She sat down with Elaina D. Smith to discuss her new single
There’s a lot happening in Lainey Wilson’s world right now. She’s been on tour, scored another number one with “Never Say Never” with Cole Swindell, and she’s just released her new song, Heart Like A Truck.
It’s been a while since Lainey put out new solo music, but she’s been keeping busy. She wrote over three hundred songs during the pandemic! Lainey sat down with Elaina D. Smith to talk about her new single. And Elaina wants to know where the idea for “Heart Like A Truck” came from.
“I wrote it with two of my dear friends Dallas Wilson and Trannie Anderson, they’re incredible songwriters, we call ourselves The Heart Wranglers, we go on retreats together. We sat down to write that day in the thick of the pandemic and we were talking about all the different things that we were going through and Trannie had this idea, Heart Like A Truck, and I was like cool, I got one of those.”
“We decided to write it in a way that was vulnerable, and tells a story but not so much about where I’ve been but more importantly where I'm going. It’s a song about finding freedom and strength. Not being afraid of the scars and the bruises and the bumps along the way. That makes you who you are. It builds character.”
So why this song for the next single?
“Throughout this whole process, especially the last couple years, I feel like I have been able to be successful by being nothing but myself and telling my story. It was the same for Things A Man Oughta Know. I was being true to myself and talking about things my parents taught me growing up and certain characteristics in other people to look out for.”
“I want to put that foot forward every time I decide what we’re going to put out into the universe. I wanna be like, is this true to who I am? Is this the kind of thing I wanna say, are these the kind of messages I want to bring light to. And Heart Like A Truck checked all the boxes.”
WATCH: Lainey Wilson - Heart Like A Truck (Official Music Video)
Lainey Wilson is going to be very busy for the rest of the year, and she’ll be closing it out with Luke Combs. How did she find out she was getting in on that tour?
“He called me. I was writing downtown a few months ago. And he called me like, 'Hey, just calling to check up, what do you think about this?' And I was like you don’t even have to ask me twice. I’ll do it. He’s been a friend of mine for a really long time and it’s full circle, it really is. I’m so proud of him.”
“We met in probably 2014, and I met him at a writer’s round and invited him to come to my camper trailer and write a song with me. He would come over to my camper and I reminded him all the time, remember when you used to use my AC and drink my cold drinks? The song made it to his first EP, it’s called if you want to. If you listen closely, I’m singing in the background.”
Check out baby faced Lainey Wilson and Luke Combs singing way back in 2014!
Any songwriting fan will know that a bridge can add such drama and new depth to a song. The bridge in this song reminded Elaina of musical theatre in a way, it’s very dramatic.
“You see a title like Heart Like A Truck, and automatically think it’s going to be this dirt road vibe, tailgate kind of song and I still want people to feel down home with it, sure, but I wanted it to be universal, I wanted it to take them somewhere else. And I think the bridge does that, it takes you away for a split second. Jay Joyce is a master.”
Lainey worked with Nashville producing juggernaut Jay Joyce on her first record and her new one. She walked us through the recording process.
“Jay Joyce’s studio is this old renovated church near Nashville and basically made it into a studio. So we are all sitting around in a circle in the middle of the sanctuary, you see the stained glass windows and the baptism area and there’s just a vibe. The only person who is behind a wall is the drummer, he’s kind of enclosed behind the pulpit area.”
“We sit around and we jam. This song took a little bit more but we played the song a total of fifty times before we got it right. That’s what it’s about, it’s about coming together and doing it in a way that feels like second nature and it feels special to me.”
If you haven’t listened to “Heart Like A Truck” yet, (what rock have you been living under?!), wait until you hear that high note at the end of the song!
“That note on the end is like eight seconds long, I don’t know what I was doing to myself cause now I’ve got to sing it every single night of my life. I was channelling my inner Martina McBride. It was the first cut, we were in there cutting the vocal, me and Jay Joyce and he was saying give me something at the end, do something. I held the note at the end. At what point do I stop? That’s it. We don’t need anymore.”
Lainey Wilson with Producer, Jay Joyce in his Nashville studio.
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