Lainey Wilson said she'll “continue to push it and level up” when she extends her latest studio album, Whirlwind, with the deluxe edition later this summer.

The reigning Academy of Country Music Artist-Songwriter of the Year (a victory that Reba McEntire and Miranda Lambert revealed to Wilson in a surprise moment backstage) penned five new songs after she released the original 14-track record in August 2024. So far, Wilson has released “Bell Bottoms Up” — the same name as the bar she opened last year in Nashville, Tennessee — and “Somewhere Over Laredo” from the deluxe album. The rest will arrive on August 22 to mark the one-year anniversary of the original Whirlwind’s release.

“I’m very proud of this song,” Wilson said in a recent interview with iHeartCountry of “Somewhere Over Laredo,” which she wrote with Trannie Anderson, Dallas Wilson and Andy Albert. “I spend a lot of my time in the air on a plane, headed to the next town, to the next show, and I catch myself just looking out the window and dreaming, and thinking, and reminiscing, talking to God, (and) writing songs. And I feel like this song right here, it gave me an opportunity to step back into a pair of shoes that I wore years ago, and I got to tell a story from that perspective. So, and that’s what country music is, you know? It’s about taking you back to a certain time and place, and memory and feeling, and that’s what we wanted to capture in this song right here. And it was cool to be able to tip our hat at the same time to one of the most classic songs of all time [‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ famously performed by actress Judy Garland when she played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in 1939].

“These songs that are gonna be on the deluxe, they were all written after Whirlwind was out, so it was kind of like the next step, or what life I lived right after Whirlwind was released,” Wilson continued. “And so, it was cool to be able to tap into that, and also, it’s cool to be able to share that side, too, with the fans. And I’m really, really proud of this. I mean, I’m partial, but somehow, I feel like we continue to push it and level up, and I feel like even the people that I write songs with, they’re feeling the same way. We’re like, ‘OK, we really did it with this one,’ and we’re like, ‘OK, well how does it get better than this?’ And then it somehow does. But that’s a good place. That’s a very good place to be in.”

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