Brad Paisley has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 2001, but he just made musical magic with the Opry’s newest member. Paisley was joined for a recent performance by Lainey Wilson, who was inducted in June, to sing his 2004 hit, “Whiskey Lullaby,” originally recorded with Alison Krauss.

The two performed together the same day Wilson’s third studio album, Whirlwind, was released.

“You never know what might happen at The Grand Ole Opry!” Paisley writes alongside a video of their entire performance, which he shared on social media. “Thanks Lainey Wilson for joining me for ‘Whiskey Lullaby’ and congrats on the launch of your new album today!”

 

“Whiskey Lullaby” was written by Bill Anderson and Jon Randall, shortly after Randall’s divorce from Lorrie Morgan.

“Jon Randall and I got together to write one morning, and I came in and said, ‘I’ve got an idea to write a song called ‘Midnight Cigarette,'” Anderson recalls (via American Songwriter). “Can you imagine a cigarette just sitting on an ashtray at midnight? Nobody’s smoking it or paying it any attention, and it just sort of burns out and goes out all by itself, and liken that to a relationship—it wasn’t like you hit a wall or anything, it just burned out, it just went away.”

“And he loved that idea, and had been going through a lot of personal things in his life … he said, ‘Well, I put the bottle to my head and pulled the trigger a few times,’ and next thing I’m going, ‘Forget the midnight cigarette! I love put the bottle to the head and pulled the trigger!’” he continues. “So what we did was we combined my line, ‘She put him out like the burning end of a midnight cigarette,’ as the opening line of ‘Whiskey Lullaby,’ and it worked really well. And then, of course, the line that everyone remembers is, ‘Put the bottle to his head and pulled the trigger,’ so that was probably an example of co-writing in its purest form, where both people contribute pretty much equally to the process.”

Fortuitously, it was Anderson who invited Paisley to join the Grand Ole Opry in December of 2001, with Steve Wariner inducting him the following February.

“I don’t feel worthy but I hope to earn it,” Paisley said during his induction. “I’ll spend my career making this place proud they did this. It means the world to me that my friend Steve Wariner was part of it.”

Both Paisley and Wilson were on hand earlier in August, when Post Malone made his Grand Ole Opry debut, invited by Paisley. The rapper-turned-country-singer performed “Nosedive” together, from Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion album, out now.