It's just the picture: Lainey Wilson is playing in a club with less than 100 seats, singing a song so new that she needs one of her bandmates — Post Malone, of all people — to hold her cell phone so she can read the lyrics from the screen.
That was the backdrop when Wilson participated in a songwriters-in-the-round event on June 17 at Nashville's famed Bluebird Cafe. It was, he says, the first time he had played “4x4xU” live.
“I didn't even know the chords,” he recalls. “I was just making them that night.”
The song would enter the public domain when Broken Bow released the track and accompanying video to digital service providers on July 4, ahead of the August 23 date for her Whirlwind album. On August 26th, “4x4xU” officially went to radio via PlayMPE, continuing a trend inadvertently developed by previous singles “Heart Like a Truck” and “Wait in the Truck,” a collaboration with HARDY.
“For so long,” he says, “I was like, 'I'm not going to write about trucks.' That's what everyone does. [But] every single one of my biggest songs is about a damn truck. I couldn't help it but I guess you just write what you know. And the truth is, trucks are a big part of my childhood and even with the way I live now, I'm always up and down the road.”
Fittingly, Wilson spelled “4x4xU” on the road when she played Indianapolis' Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Nov. 1, 2023, in conjunction with the 96th annual FFA Convention. The event cultivated some of her creative mindset for the day.
“I was excited to be at the FFA Convention,” she reflects. “My dad started one of the first FFAs at Louisiana Tech in Ruston. It just felt cool. He was like, “Man, I want to write a song for my people. I want to write a song to keep my people close.' “
It wasn't the first thing on the menu. Co-writers Aaron Raitiere (“You Look Like You Love Me”) and Jon Decious helped her first create a cheeky light-funk track, “Ring Finger.” Once it was over, they found themselves with a small window before the gig, and were all game for a whirlwind attempt at something else.
“We didn't have more than 30 or 40 minutes,” says Decious. “He was supposed to be a superstar, you know, in 50 minutes.”
Decious wasted no time—as guitars strummed on the bus, he brought up the “4x4xU” hook he'd developed during a brainstorming session.
“I spend, gosh, several hours a week chasing titles, I call it, and this was something that I kind of came across,” he says. “It kind of reminded me of — like, I'm a big Prince fan, and you know how he would put numbers [in titles] and also, instead of writing 'you', he would just put the letter 'U'. “Nothing Compares 2 U” is a good example. It's nice, but I don't see it very often in the country.”
Wilson turned the “4x4xU” hook into a gently rising melody, very close to how Decious had envisioned it, and the phrase became the opening line of the chorus. The next line, “From the bayou to Kentucky,” enhanced the truck's travel vibe in a personal way.
“She's from the bayou and we're from Kentucky,” Raitiere says. “We were putting all these little, little, little nuggets in there. Hopefully people hear it on the second listen or something.”
These two lines had a subtle verbal relationship—“4×4 by you” sounds like “bayou”—and added a few more locations to the rest of the chorus. They switched up those communities in the second verse, covering New York, Los Angeles, and some strangely named cities.
“We just wanted to get them everywhere,” says Raitiere. “And then Timbuktu. I've been putting Timbuktu on songs for a while. Kalamazoo rhymes with Timbuktu. They just seem like weird words. I actually got someone from Kalamazoo and they told me they were so proud to have Kalamazoo on another song.”
When they formed the opening verse, they instinctively took a cinematic approach. The plot lens focused first on the singer, riding shotgun at the moving vehicle, then on the guy in the driver's seat, who has “his hands 10 and two on this heart of mine.” This is one of those nuggets that Raitiere mentioned, the steering wheel numbers that set the four-by-fours to come.
He parked the car in verse two, dropping their speed '90 to nothing', once again giving more numbers to the text. When they reached the bridge, the plot seemed to leave the vehicle, turning the camera towards the sun, stars and moon.
“I like that contrast,” says Decious. “You know, tete-a-tete, the idea of it is so frustrating and so tangible, but then the idea of space and time is very intangible. So I love the contrast of these. I think it was just an accident that we went there, a happy accident.”
When Wilson brought “4x4xU” to producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Miranda Lambert), the track was laid down during multi-keyboard tracking at Neon Cross Studio, including psychotic electric pianos and church organ sounds. The bridge got a special treatment with a revised set of more ambitious chords and a fermata – an extended hold as the electronica pieces create otherworldly atmospherics.
“Jay does this a lot,” says Wilson. “It kind of takes you to space. It kind of takes you somewhere in the clouds, and then when you come back to that chorus, it's almost like it brings you back down to Earth. When you can feel both of those feelings – when you can feel grounded and rooted, like your feet are on the ground, but also like your head is in the clouds – to me, there's something really special about being able to feel both two in one song.”
Another unusual moment in “4x4xU” occurs in the latter half of verse two, with the band breaking into double time, in direct contrast to the “slow motion” verse.
“That was my only production note,” says Wilson. “I was like, 'What if we dig a little bit here and get a little sexy?' And Jay was excited about it.”
The fan base reacted strongly to “4x4xU” and it continues its steady upward movement on the charts, reaching No. 28 in its sixth week on the Country Airplay chart dated October 19 and No. 32 in its fifth week on the corresponding Hot. Country songs. Equally important, he plays a key role in Wilson's concerts.
“I still felt like we were missing something that was a big moment, something where you put your hands in the air, swing back and forth,” he says. “Honestly, it's all about the live show.”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/country/makin-tracks-lainey-wilson-4x4xu-1235802696/