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Country star Lainey Wilson on her long road to Grammy glory: ‘Maybe I wasn’t as crazy as people thought!’

After slogging through poverty, indifference and Hannah Montana impersonations, the US singer is an award-winning sensation and selling out a UK tour. She explains why her genre is going mainstream like never before

But for all the tough earnestness she’s got a playful swagger, too, and not just in a clutch of catchy anthems – when we talk, Wilson has just returned to Nashville from touring Australia, where she surprised fans by chugging beer from a boot. “I never thought somebody on literally the other side of the world would ever be able to relate to my story,” she says, lying on a lounger on her lawn, mildly distracted by her french bulldog Hippy Mae ( an Instagram star in her own right). But part of the delay Wilson experienced is arguably down to the country music establishment’s attitude towards female artists: occasional breakout stars such as Kacey Musgraves, Carrie Underwood and of course Taylor Swift are relatively rare between the men singing about women, trucks and beer.

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