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Lenny Wilson She struggled in the music industry for several years before she became a household name, but she initially had trouble coping with her new fame.
In her new Netflix documentary, Lenny Wilson: Keeping Country CoolThe 33-year-old Grammy winner opened up about the anxiety and depression she felt after her career took off around 2020.
“It was crazy a few years ago. Everything I had ever dreamed of happened at once,” she recalls in the video, which begins streaming Wednesday, April 22. “When opportunities come your way and you don’t have them for a long time, you want to take them all. I think part of that may be the fear that the opportunities won’t always be there.”
The country star said she “probably found her self-worth in her work,” which led her to put aside the person off the stage.
“I guess I haven’t felt like myself for a few years,” she explains. “I got to the point where I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be the same again.'” I was so anxious, and the anxiety led to depression, and the depression led to more anxiety, because I was like, ‘Why on earth am I depressed at this point in my life?’ This is everything I’ve ever wanted. “
She added, “I guess you could say, I had a couple…a couple breakdowns. I just lost it. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can get any further.'”
Wilson’s manager, Mandelin Monchikrecalling a terrifying moment when the “Twister” singer called her in tears from the airport and said she felt like she was “losing her mind.”
Lainey Wilson is one of the hottest artists in country music, but even she gets her haters from time to time. Luckily, she invented a perfect way to block out the noise. Wilson, 32, spoke candidly about dealing with naysayers in an exclusive interview with Us Weekly . “I’ve definitely developed a thicker skin and I’m proud of it because (…)
“I thought I was never going to recover from that, either,” Wilson recalled. “It was a severe panic attack that lasted for several days. I was attending shows and everything else during the panic attack. It was so scary. It was a chemical imbalance happening. I was like out of control. And then there was the fear of thinking that I was going to be stuck in this state of mind forever — which led to more anxiety. It was like a vicious cycle.”
Wilson went on to say that she eventually found her direction when she felt like her career was on a more solid footing.
Lainey Wilson in the Netflix documentary Lainey Wilson: Keeping Country Cool.
Provided by Netflix“I put a lot of pressure on myself to be right, to be right, to be perfect, to show up, to sing the damn song, to be good. All these things were constantly stressing me out,” she said emotionally. “I think once I realized that I couldn’t completely screw things up, like, say I didn’t sing well, say I didn’t look good — I think just knowing that I found my niche and I wasn’t going anywhere, I felt like now that I had my stakes in the ground, it definitely took some of the pressure off.”
CMA Award Winner Adding that one of her idols, Reba McEntiregave her a suggestion that really impressed her. (Wilson & McEntire, 71, vs. Miranda Lambert last year’s single “Trailblazer.” )
“I said, ‘This is a tough question, but what do you do when you feel like you can’t go on anymore?'” Wilson recalled. “She said, ‘I do it for other people.’ It gave me a lot of perspective. I was on that stage doing it for other people.”
on her us weekly cover story Last year, Wilson talked about the day she realized she was no longer just a girl from a small town in Louisiana who went from “selling 87 tickets in Tuscaloosa” to breaking the New York State Fair attendance record just a few months later.
“I was getting ready for the show that day, and I looked out the bus window and saw a couple of people getting their lawn chairs out,” she said in November 2025. “And then before I got on stage, someone got on the bus and said, ‘You won’t believe how many people are out there.'” That was one of my first moments where I was like, ‘Kick your boots together — we’re not in Baskin anymore. ‘”
Lenny Wilson: Keeping Country Cool Premieres on Netflix on Wednesday, April 22.
