Insanely enough, Grammy award-winning, bell-bottom jean-wearing, recently renamed Miss. Lainey Wilson Hodges had yet to cross paths with country music superstar Tim McGraw… until this past weekend.
Wilson has been very vocal in the past about her admiration for McGraw from a young age, aiming to get her start in the music industry from the man that her step-grandmother used to babysit when he was younger. Hoping to use these family ties to her advantage, she even wrote the “Something Like That” singer a letter at the age of 18, along with a demo CD.
While the snail mail apparently never made it into the hands of McGraw, it did find its way into Wilson’s Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit in Nashville. In her recent Netflix documentary, Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ It Cool, the Louisiana native shared a snippet of the letter, which read: “Singing, writing, and performing are the most important things in my life. All I need is the opportunity, and I can do the rest.”
It’s no shocker now to see that the “4x4xU” singer continues to stick to her 18-year-old motto and crush every opportunity she gets, but even up until the age of 34, Wilson had still yet to shake hands with her idol, who grew up right down the road from her. That was until McGraw’s recent Saturday night, June 6, CMA Fest performance.
Marking one of the biggest crossovers of the weekend, McGraw brought out Wilson for a live rendition of his 1995 third number one single, “I Like It, I Love It.” Before hitting the Nissan Stadium stage together, a recent behind-the-scenes video from Wilson’s social media revealed that 16 years later, McGraw finally got to rectify never receiving Wilson’s letter.
Before heading up to meet him, she humbly shared, “This is my childhood dream right here. He don’t understand how much of an influence he is to me.” She also hilariously revealed, “I made up dance routines to every song he had, and I might show him.”
After rehashing their hometown Louisiana memories and breaking down the logistics of their duet performance, they headed backstage, where McGraw unveiled his very own letter to Wilson. He clarified, “I recently, well, last year, found out about your letter, and I was embarrassed first off that I never saw it.”
He then handed her a handwritten note, written from the point of view as if he had received the letter then. As the real cherry on top, he added that songwriter Tom Douglas (the man behind “The House That Built Me,” “Southern Voice,” and “I Run To You”) also wrote a song about Wilson’s letter.
Whether or not the song will ever be cut by Wilson or McGraw remains a mystery, but at least Wilson did have the gumption to finish the interaction by admitting her numerous dance routines to him, and of course, later crushing their surprise performance together with Wilson popping out at the bridge to round out CMA Fest’s Saturday night shows.