Lainey Wilson Offers Up Her Summer Song, “Somewhere Over Laredo”
In the coming weeks, the country music candidates for what will be considered the 2025 “Song of the Summer” will start to align, and Lainey Wilson has offered up a new single that certainly could find itself in contention.
With a prominent fiddle, a familiar reference and theme freshened to a new perspective, and like so many great country songs, evoking geography in a meaningful and resonant way, “Somewhere Over Laredo” draws inspiration and nostalgia from Judy Garland, maybe a little of Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings,” and symbolizes the kind of country music that an artist like Lainey Wilson should be singing and releasing.
Going by awards show recognition, Lainey Wilson is the most decorated country star of the last few years. This includes Entertainer of the Year wins from both the CMA Awards (2023), and the ACM Awards (2025). But Wilson has as many Entertainer of the Year wins as she does #1s. It’s just as much about what Lainey Wilson has accomplished as it is that her name is not Morgan Wallen that has ensconced her at the top of the trophy count.
The truth is that even if you’re Lainey Wilson and at the very top of the class when it comes to country women, you’re still not going to compete with the bros on country radio. As everything is moving away from overproduced country radio schlock, country radio is doubling down on it. A song like Lainey’s “4X4XU” might work seamlessly with the country radio format, and be ripe for retrofitting for a F-150 commercial. But even then it still stalls out at #4 on radio.
So why not release something a little more ambitious, and little more country, and a little more emotion-laden? “Somewhere Over Laredo” is not perfect, but it’s the kind of song an artist like Lainey Wilson needs to be releasing—country, but sensible and accessible. It even somehow made it across the desk of producer Jay Joyce, a.k.a. the “Destroyer of Worlds” when it comes to country production, and he didn’t squelch all the life out of it like he did for large swaths of Lainey’s last album Whirlwind.
“Somewhere Over Laredo” is one of the bonus tracks from Wilson’s Whirlwind (Deluxe) set to arrive on August 22nd. As a reigning Entertainer of the Year, if Lainey Wilson wants to lead, it’s songs like “Somewhere Over Laredo” she needs to center.
8/10
May 25, 2025 @ 8:46 am
I like the song enough, especially the fiddle. However, when I think of the “song of the summer”, I usually think of a more upbeat song . Doesn’t diminish this song, just not what would come to mind.
May 25, 2025 @ 8:58 am
Song of the Summer in 2022 – Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange.”
Song of the Summer in 2023 – Luke Combs “Fast Car.”
Runner Up – Oliver Anthony – “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
Song of the Summer 2024 – Shaboozey – “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”
Runner Up – Post Malone feat. Morgan Wallen – “I Had Some Help”
We’re living in the age of sad songs in country. “I Had Some Help” was the anomaly.
May 25, 2025 @ 9:38 am
I should have said “up tempo”, not “upbeat”
May 25, 2025 @ 9:51 am
You’re right that generally speaking, the “Song of the Summer” is a bop. But I do think there was a calculation here to try something a little more moving, Lainey Wilson is not going to compete with Post Malone and Morgan Wallen,and she should try. She should just try to be Lainey Wilson, and lean into what she does best.
May 27, 2025 @ 5:07 am
Given the crash and burn of “Hang Tight Honey,” it might be a while before she has another uptempo song sent to radio. That might be a good thing, given Jay Joyce’s reputation for noisy excess in the production of anything uptempo.
May 25, 2025 @ 9:15 am
I like it, great song! Her voice is so great. Please consider Joe Stamm’s latest single “Territory Town” for song of the summer!
May 25, 2025 @ 9:18 am
Good song, but, the two note “some – where” opening phrase to the chorus doesn’t the do song justice.
The singer should have executed those two iconic opening notes more like Judy Garland did, not with a strained and throaty howl.
Whole songs are often ruined by money notes not being hit correctly. In this case “where” is a money note. If you strain to get to it, it fails.
The Star Spangled Banner gets bungled 99 times out of a hundred because of the phrase “o’er land of the free.” almost no one can hit and sustain the “free.”
The move between “some” and “where” is subtle and creates the tension.
I think there is a semiquaver rest missing in it.
May 25, 2025 @ 12:58 pm
It’s better than some of her other songs but it still crams in sub-par lyrics that would have been thrown out in the 90’s if they were trying to write a 1# song.
Chorus:
“Couple wrong for each other, lone star-crossed lovers
Born to get gone from the get-go”
“Born to get gone from the get-go” is just a bad lyric.
This is also terrible on the bridge:
“Where the blackbirds fly
Once in a lullaby”
In a perfect world Morgan Wallen wouldn’t be hogging all the 1# spots, however the songwriters on her songs are not doing her any favors by cramming in cornball lyrics. This is still another case where her vocal styling and the instrumentation is trying to make the track come across as better than it actually is.
May 25, 2025 @ 9:22 am
Definitely a huge step in the right direction. Miranda went full on country with Postcards – Texas country anyway. Really glad Lainey proved she’s country at heart with this one.
Song of the summer – “Territory Town” by Joe Stamm Band. More of a heartland country rocker with a cool Mellencamp-esque guitar hook and “summertime” in the chorus and so it shall be if the gods of good independent country music would so oblige.
May 25, 2025 @ 9:57 am
Territory Town….lets gooo!
May 25, 2025 @ 10:11 am
Anything would be better than “4X4XU.”
What a horrible song.
May 27, 2025 @ 3:06 pm
“Bayou to Kentucky, city to the country, from here to Timbuktu.” Just awful. If you’re going to write a song about driving around in a 4×4, at least keep all the places you go to on the same continent.
May 25, 2025 @ 11:51 am
I’ll say.Doesn’t Laredo have an average July and August temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit?(38 degrees Celsius?)
May 25, 2025 @ 11:54 am
My compliments to the songwriter for having an imagination that is expansive enough to mention anything concerning Laredo in a positive light. Obviously the songwriter has never been there. I had the misfortune to work in Laredo for eighteen months (seemed like eighteen years) some years ago, and, before leaving, I informed one of the members of the city council that, as far as i was concerned, Texas could give that hellhole back to Mexico. If you like poverty, ignorance, and the mestizo way of life (time means NOTHING to them), then Laredo is the place for you.
May 25, 2025 @ 12:57 pm
Lubbock around the Clock tonight.. ♫♬♪
May 25, 2025 @ 1:15 pm
The song’s biggest credit is using “Laredo”. After playing this song I listened again to ‘Little Pass Little Rock’ by Leann Womack twice. I sense that song was partial inspiration for this song. Little Rock is also a shithole and it’s on a several hundred mile strech of other shitholes (Memphis and Tulsa) but it’s the “sound” of the city name that matters most when creating a feel for a song.
I’m being really nitpicky here but ‘Little Pass Little Rock’ does a better job at painting a picture of why the female character is leaving town but without answering the “why.” The ambiguity of the “why” is consistent throughout the song. On “Somewhere Over Laredo” the female character is bouncing between giving reasons for her leaving as “chasing the neon rainbow” which is only a passing line but would imply her chasing stardom but nothing more is given to back up that line. Then there are the lines implying they aren’t right for each other but later on saying they are essentially star crossed lovers – which is it Laney?
4X4XU is obviously a much worse song but the minor details matter as far as song hitting number 1# and being remembered (well it did in the 90’s), or quickly becoming forgettable. This isn’t a critique on Laney herself – it’s on her songwriters. This level of pickiness used to happen in songwriting. These dudes are being paid millions to write very mid songs, I don’t think it’s so wrong to expect more.
May 25, 2025 @ 3:28 pm
The songwriters hammered this out in an afternoon. It is a lazily written song. They used Laredo because it sounded Western to the suburban fan base and “chasing a neon rainbow” to show they once listened to Alan Jackson’s greatest hits.
May 25, 2025 @ 4:44 pm
After posting my earlier comment I read that this song was partially a play on the song “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” …which honestly begs more question about why the final product is what it is.
I almost always find it cheap when a song quite literally steals a famous line or song title from another song in an attempt to give itself some sort of added credibility. The comedy equivalent would be quoting Anchorman or shouting “This is Sparta!” You’re right though, everyone knows that line is tied to Alan Jackson. I heard a song on WMOT Roots radio and this song rhymed “Alimony” with “Bologna” and….everyone who occasionally has back pain knows that is Jerry Reed. WHY DO WRITERS THINK THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS?
May 25, 2025 @ 5:08 pm
“After posting my earlier comment I read that this song was partially a play on the song ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow'”
I’m pretty sure that’s obvious to most everyone in the audience.
Al lot of very nit picky over-analyzing going on of a decent radio country song here. Nobody’s claiming it’s Shakespeare. But feel free to turn on98.1 and compare it to the competition.
May 25, 2025 @ 6:07 pm
I don’t give extra points to a song for being better than its crappy competition.
Lainey is the reigning EOTY. Her standard should be higher than the generic male of the week.
May 25, 2025 @ 7:11 pm
Somehow I missed connecting those two dots. This song was released two days ago and IMMEDIATELY after all of these media outlets (Not SCM) put out their puff pieces on this song before it even had a chance to find it’s footing on the charts. This is just another attempt to astroturf one of her songs and her popularity. The song is going to plummet down the charts in two weeks.
I listened to the song a few more times and the lyrical flow is so clunky it feels like it could have been written by AI. Most of her music is like that.
May 25, 2025 @ 3:25 pm
“Streets of Laredo” called it.
May 25, 2025 @ 1:46 pm
Given the time songs not by Morgan Wallen take to climb the chart, this is more likely to be the song of the fall than the song of the summer. I’d give Jelly Roll’s bombastic “Heart of Stone” or Thomas Rhett’s snap track “After All the Bars Are Closed” a better shot at being the song we can’t escape come July, unfortunately.
May 25, 2025 @ 4:41 pm
Nothing she sings impresses me…
May 25, 2025 @ 11:26 pm
Its a good country song and she is a good country singer. Nice fiddle. She is good in concert.
May 25, 2025 @ 11:53 pm
The song’s fine, but I don’t see this moving the needle much like “Things A Man Oughta Know” or “Watermelon Moonshine” did. This is just a bit too tame and middle-of-the-road to be a formidable “Song Of The Summer” favorite in my view.
If you were to ask me what I think the early frontrunners are (strictly in a mainstream commercial context)………….I’d say it’s between Riley Green’s “Worst Way”, Morgan Wallen’s “Just In Case” and (possibly, based off of some early signs of serious strength and buzz after a preceding chart flop) Scotty McCreery’s “Bottle Rockets”. I’d say “Worst Way” has the edge at the moment in part due to Wallen essentially cannibalizing any one of his singles from having a definitive edge due to multiple getting unsolicited airplay.
May 26, 2025 @ 1:39 am
“Worst Way” is peaking before summer even starts, but yeah, it’s already a monster hit and, like “You Look Like You Love Me” this past winter, has a memorable video to push it along.
May 26, 2025 @ 3:12 pm
“Song Of The Summer” candidates typically peak early in the summer, though, and are thereafter buoyed by strong recurrent airplay through Labor Day Weekend.
So Green’s hit is peaking at about the perfect time to pad a decisive advantage over his competition through the remainder of the summer. Whereas if any more contenders throw their hats into the ring in subsequent weeks, they’ll be at a sizable disadvantage due to having minimal airplay and streams already banked up (and, hence, chart points), unlike Green and Wallen’s releases.
May 26, 2025 @ 12:18 pm
Riley Green is having a surge on social media. I had not heard “Worst Way” until I looked it up after reading this comment. Riley is definetly sounding closer to Morgan Wallen then Tim Mcgraw on that song. As it stands right now I would think Wallen is the closest to having the song of the summer.
(I would vote for that 31 yr old kid who yells in a campfire circle: “You’ll be married in a year in the suburbs with a kid on the way in three. Convincing yourself you’re living the American dream)
May 27, 2025 @ 5:36 pm
Green is trying to channel his inner Conway Twitty with that song. The video is hilarious.
May 26, 2025 @ 12:06 am
This song is fine. Not great, not terrible,
As far as song of the summer goes, unfortunately I fear it’s inevitable one of the tracks off of Wallen’s new monstrosity is predestined to carry that title, at least as far as country radio is concerned.
For me, however, the song of Summer 2025 was released on Friday – “Territory Town” by Joe Stamm Band. It’s got the right mix of being uptempo, super nostalgic and just an overall really fun song to be the perfect summer song, IMO. And Stamm’s way of bringing his characters to life, despite each of them only getting a few lines, is really showcased on this one.
May 26, 2025 @ 3:15 pm
I would give the edge to Riley Green’s “Worst Way” at the moment, though: because Wallen’s numerous, simultaneously charting singles are effectively competing against each other for airplay and, thus, are cannibalizing each other to an extent.
“Worst Way”, in contrast, is peaking at the perfect time for a “Song Of The Summer” contender with already having all these spins and streams banked up while newer contenders won’t be able to catch up by the end of the summer airplay and stream-wise, and because his label is singularly focused on a particular single at a time doesn’t have to worry about the aforementioned issues.
May 26, 2025 @ 7:59 am
Pleasant enough, lovely chorus melody — I could imagine it feeling like a breath of fresh air next to most of country radio’s other likely offerings, and I hope it strikes a chord with more ’90s-nostalgic listeners. 🙂
My pick for summer song, in any genre, is Sparks’ “A Little Bit of Light Banter”; since it dropped this past Wednesday (its parent album, MAD!, arrived Friday), it’s been extremely difficult to dislodge from my head and it makes me smile every time. The closest thing to country about it might be the strummed-acoustic intro, which quickly gives way to a sort of music-hall bounce reminiscent of the duo’s 1975 single “Get in the Swing”; lyrically, I see it both as an informed response to the world’s harshness and negativity, and as a clever twist on the common romantic advice to “never go to bed angry” (“We may talk about art, music, or movies without guns… There’s a comfort in always knowing we will never fight / Just stick to the lighter issues, then you turn off the light”). ♥
May 27, 2025 @ 7:29 am
Seriously? Sparks? This is Saving COUNTRY Music
May 27, 2025 @ 9:26 am
Fair enough. 😀
I do think it would be cool if a track from Trisha Yearwood’s ‘The Mirror’ (due out July 18, her first album that she fully co-wrote and co-produced) could break out; I’ve already heard “The Wall or the Way Over” and “Bringing the Angels,” both of which I really liked.
May 26, 2025 @ 9:33 am
Isn’t Laredo about four-fifths Hispanic ? Maybe it never truly left Mexico !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 27, 2025 @ 12:08 am
No mention that it sounds like & references “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” ? 🌈
We got something similar already when she released “Watermelon Moonshine”, which sounded a bit like Strawberry Wine.
It just doesn’t come across as ambitiously creative… Both Lainey songs are great but they make me want to listen to Strawberry Wine & Over the Rainbow immediately after.
Coming from the biggest star in the genre today, I’m left a bit underwhelmed.
May 27, 2025 @ 7:45 am
“Watermelon Mooshine” crossed its fingers that nobody in the audience had heard “Strawberry Wine.” “Somewhere Over Laredo” is purposely referencing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” as a cultural standard, similar to Randy Travis and “Forever and Ever, Amen.” That’s the whole point of the lyric, not something underhanded like some are trying to portray it here.
May 27, 2025 @ 3:11 pm
What was Randy Travis referencing in “Forever and Ever, Amen”? Couldn’t have been George Strait’s “World Without End, Amen,” because that song came out two years after Randy’s.
May 27, 2025 @ 3:29 pm
He was referencing the Christian prayer that is commonly known through culture, similar to “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.”
May 27, 2025 @ 8:25 pm
Well I look forward to Jelly Roll’s new song titled “A Motorcycle Built for Two”.
May 27, 2025 @ 4:51 am
after listening to Joe Stamm’s “Territory Town” more this past weekend I can’t imagine it not beating out this Lainey Wilson song.
May 27, 2025 @ 7:47 am
Unfortunately, it’s not the comments section of Saving Country Music that gets to pick the “Song of the Summer.” The point of this article was not to name the 2025 Song of the Summer. It was simply a review of a Lainey Wilson song that’s her offering.
May 27, 2025 @ 8:23 am
right, but, a review of “Territory Town” would have been a better review, you seem to snob out Joe Stamm like you did on song of the year, but I know Jinks is in your back pocket. Have you ever let us, the public vote on songs or is it just you? Just because you own this site does not mean you are the best at picking what to review and rate. Obviously, the woman of country has been heavily favored on reviews for records and this song.
May 27, 2025 @ 8:50 am
Adam,
First, nobody has put more ink behind Joe Stamm and The Joe Stamm Band than myself, full stop. If I’m nominating him for Song of the Year right beside Cody Jinks, this speaks to how much I regard Joe Stamm, not that I’m insulting him if he doesn’t win. I never “snob out” anything to review something else. I rarely review songs at all. I reviewed this one because there were some deeper points I wanted to make about popular country and country radio. I’ve already given Joe Stamm’s new album a lot of support, just like I did his last one, and I’m sure I will give it more. And yes, I do put an emphasis on women, just like I put an emphasis on independent artists like Joe Stamm, because both cohorts tend to get unfairly overlooked. But please don’t insult me by saying I’m ignoring Joe Stamm. I do the best I can to highlight important artists, while also holding mainstream country’s feet to the fire.
May 27, 2025 @ 7:23 am
Meh
May 27, 2025 @ 1:18 pm
I want to like this song, but the chorus just doesn’t do it for me. The phrasing just doesn’t work.
May 27, 2025 @ 1:35 pm
Lainey Wilson is a mediocre artist at best. Her songs, her voice, her stage show – everything is somewhat average. There’s nothing brilliant, outstanding, or unique about her. The fact that she’s currently considered as one of the most famous female country singers shows how far this genre still has to go before it’s truly saved.
May 27, 2025 @ 4:22 pm
You can say what you want about her songs, voice, and her awful choice of producers that we hope and pray she rids herself of, but really, when she takes the stage, she brings it every night, and she’s fun to watch. Except for Sierra Ferrell and maybe 1 or 2 others, there are so very few that can dream of putting on the show Lainey does. This song is just ok, like her latest album. “OK” doesn’t cut it. That’s why she needs a change. This woman has a great album in her. I hope someone over there hears us???
May 27, 2025 @ 2:32 pm
Great song, can’t stop listening to it!
May 28, 2025 @ 8:08 am
I can’t help myself by pointing out yet another song to get the fans all juiced up that is only available by repurchasing the album in a “deluxe” edition.
May 28, 2025 @ 8:29 am
Were I a country music songwriter I’d have found a way to work “them boys there from O’Connor” into a Laredo track, if not Pussywillow Rose.
Hope it does well for her – she sorta left my lane a while ago but still on her side.
May 28, 2025 @ 8:50 am
Great song!
“They think they own Laredo, too.”
A real song by a songwriter.
May 28, 2025 @ 5:48 pm
I like Lainey, but this is dreck.