Lainey Wilson has a lot on her plate at the CMAs this year — she’s both performing and hosting — but she’s not letting the workload get to her.
“It’s gonna be funny,” Wilson, 33, exclusively told Us Weekly during her cover story interview ahead of the Wednesday, November 19, awards show. “I’m hosting the entire thing by myself, I’m up for six nominations. I’m like, ‘Oh, Lord, it’s gonna be fun.’ It’s gonna be a very busy night.”
The Grammy winner added that she plans on having a good time among her friends and colleagues.
“I said, ‘If I can just get up there and y’all let me run my mouth and celebrate country music and celebrate all of my friends in this industry, then I think I’ll do OK,’” she explained.
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Wilson plays for enormous audiences when she’s out on tour — she sold out Madison Square Garden for the first time in October — but she says performing for a room full of her peers feels “100 percent” different.
“That’s why I just gotta close my eyes and pretend everybody’s in their underwear, you know what I’m saying?” she joked. “It’s definitely a different feeling, and things come across differently on TV than they do in the room. We’re gonna work on it the week leading up to it, and it’s gonna be great.”
The “4x4xU” singer is hosting the CMA Awards solo for the first time this year after emceeing the show last year alongside fellow country star Luke Bryan and former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. She is also nominated for six awards: Entertainer of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year, Single of the Year, Song of the Year and Music Video of the Year.
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Wilson took home her first CMA for Entertainer of the Year in 2023, becoming the first woman to win the award in more than a decade. The last female artist to win was Taylor Swift, who won in 2009 and 2011.
While Wilson is thrilled to be carrying the torch for all the powerful women artists who came before her, she told Us that she and other female musicians “have no choice” but to keep breaking barriers.
“I’ve known since I moved to Nashville in 2011 that there are going to be some barn doors that I was going to have to just go kick down myself, that nobody was going to do it,” she explained. “It was truly a bitter pill that I swallowed a long time ago. So, in the times when I felt like maybe it’s a little bit harder just because I’m a girl, that’s when I dug in deeper and worked harder, and the only reason I’m even here in this position is because of what the women before me have done.”
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She cites Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton as two of the women who’ve made it possible for to be where she is today. (She happens to have collaborated with both, on 2025’s “Trailblazer” and a 2023 cover of The Judds’ “Mama He’s Crazy,” respectively.)
“Those other women … have continually just knocked barn doors down for each other, and we’re gonna have to keep doing it even generations on,” she added, noting that she tries to help younger artists by “being a listening ear, sharing the wisdom that was passed along to me from people like Reba and Dolly, who were more than willing to give me that wisdom from the goodness of their heart. Everything they say, I bottle it up. I’m like, ‘OK, these women have done something right, and they are where they are because of the things they’ve learned along the way.’”
The 59th annual CMA Awards air live on ABC Wednesday, November 19, at 8 p.m. ET. For more with Wilson, pick up the Humankind Issue of Us Weekly, on stands now.
