Lainey Wilson is not the most nominated artist heading into the 2025 ACM Awards. That honor goes to relative newcomer, Ella Langley, who received the most nominations, with eight. Wilson received seven nods, along with Cody Johnson and Morgan Wallen.
Although Langley and Wilson share a few categories, including Female Artist of the Year and Song of the Year, no one is happier for Langley than Wilson.
“I could not be more thrilled,” Wilson shares with Everything Nash and other outlets, at a recent media event. “I could not be more excited to see it happening to a girl that just knows who she is. She shows up, and she rolls her sleeves up, and she is ready to kick down barn doors. You gotta have that spirit in this business. If you don’t have that spirit, there’s somebody behind you that’s going to have that spirt, and they’re going to knock down that barn door for you. So, she’s one of those.
“I would not be surprised if she comes in there with her broom and starts sweeping it up,” she adds. “And I’d be behind her with a dustpan … I was like, ‘Let’s go.’ I’m glad to see the community really taking notice in somebody who’s just got it. That’s a good feeling, especially as a female in the business. It’s good to see.”
Wilson knows a bit about hard work. The newly-engaged singer just returned from the overseas leg of her Whirlwind Tour. She is also working hard on a new album, less than a year after Whirlwind was released.
“Before Whirlwind was out, I really was already starting on this,” Wilson shares on Apple Music Country‘s The Kelleigh Bannen Show. “I feel like how it happens, it takes forever for a record to come out. And then by the time it does and it’s out for a little bit, you’ve already lived a lot of life to the point, to where you have so many more stories to tell. So I think it’s important to start putting those stories down before the other one comes out.”
Included on her next project is a fan-favorite called “Bell Bottoms Up.”
“I don’t have a release date. But we have a bar called Bell Bottoms Up,” Wilson explains. “We wrote a song called ‘Bell Bottoms Up’. I had said for a long time, I was like, ‘If I ever have a bar on Broadway it’s going to be called Bell Bottoms Up.’ So we wrote the theme song, and I wrote it with my band.”
Wilson is nominated again for Entertainer of the Year, a category she won at the ACM Awards in 2024. She shares the category this year with Johnson, Wallen, Kelsea Ballerini, Luke Combs, Jelly Roll and Chris Stapleton.
The 2025 ACM Awards will take place on May 8 at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas. Reba McEntire will return to host the ceremony, for the second year in a row. The ceremony will stream live exclusively on Amazon Prime. Tickets for the general public are available now, via SeatGeek. More information is available at ACMCountry.com.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the CMA