Lainey Wilson on Being an Emmy Contender: “Blows My Mind”

Lainey Wilson was a contender for her first Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Music and Lyrics category for her song “Smell Like Smoke.” The country singer/songwriter penned the song, which was featured in Season 5 of Yellowstone and her sophomore album Bell Bottom Country, with Monty Criswell, Derek George and Lynn Hutton.

Wilson, who made her acting debut on Yellowstone Season 5 as a musician named Abby, has had several songs featured in the Paramount Network series. In an interview with American Songwriter, Wilson shared the impact the show has had on her music career.

“Yellowstone has connected a lot of dots for me and with ‘Smell Like Smoke’ being in the show,” she tells American Songwriter. “It’s one of those songs that we wrote specifically for the show. I sat down with this group of writers, and this was before I even knew that I was going to be in the show. We decided we wanted it to be edgy. We wanted to talk about heartbreak and triumph.”

This edginess can be heard within the song’s first verse. Alongside gritty guitar, an ear-grabbing beat and Wilson’s Louisiana-soaked twang she gets her point across. Ain’t ashamed of where I’m from or where I’ve been / Well, I’m still my daddy’s angel, but my halo’s kinda bent / Been washed in the mud of the Mississippi / Southern-fried, dropped-in-the-grease kinda hippie / Lipstick on a cigarette, throwin’ back whiskey / What you see is what you get, Wilson sings.

“We wanted to talk about having that stand-up good character that I feel like Yellowstone really does represent,” she continues. “They talk about love. They talk about fighting for what you want. When I think about the female characters in the show, [I] think about Beth. She is a tough cookie. I was truly wanting to channel that attitude and I think that’s what we did. And then once Taylor Sheridan and Andrea [von Foerster] heard the song, they knew I think pretty much immediately that the song was perfect for the show because it was written specifically for the show. Now that it’s possibly up for an Emmy nomination, blows my mind. So we going for that EGOT.”

Wilson’s previous songs featured on Yellowstone include “Small Town Girl,” “Straight Up Sideways,” “New Friends,” and “Watermelon Moonshine.” While Wilson wrote “Smell Like Smoke” specifically for Yellowstone, she says past songs featured in the franchise were not written for the show.

“A lot of my songs that made it into Yellowstone we weren’t writing specifically for Yellowstone,” she explains. “I was just writing music from my heart, writing my story. Some of the songs that I have specifically written for Yellowstone had kind of got just pushed to the side. So, we needed to be very careful in the writing room to make sure that we weren’t trying to do something that was not me. … I knew it was a really big opportunity for me to share my music with the world.”

So can we expect Wilson to continue her role as Abby in the final season of Yellowstone? 

“I’ve learned that the TV business, the movie business, is even crazier than the music business,” she says with a laugh. “It’s all over the place. I’m pretty much at this point, just kind of waiting to see what’s going on. But when they call me, I’ll be there.”

Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Stagecoach