Jelly Roll And Lainey Wilson Discuss Their Friendship

Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson are the "it" artists in country music these days, and the two of them celebrated their success together at a party in Nashville recently. Before the event, we chatted with the country superstars, and Jelly explained how deep his friendship with Wilson goes.

Jelly said after they recorded their duet of his "Save Me" together, his friend was there for him more times than he expected, joining him to sing it on TV, at corporate parties, or even flying to different cities just to join him on stage for a concert moment fans will never forget. He said, "Twenty, thirty times, Lainey's went out of her way to come and do this for me. I could not have asked for a better dance partner."

It started a beautiful friendship. He said, "It seeped over to the family: my daughter loves her, and my wife loves her. I love Duck (her boyfriend, Devlin Hodges), and Duck loves me. I love her parents."

He concluded, "I think that we have a moment that will remembered that way forever. I think they'll be an era where we'll always look back in country music and go, 'That was kind of Jelly and Lainey's year.'"

Lainey agreed, saying, "I knew before I officially met him that he was just my kind of people. What you see is what you get, and I love people like that."

She added of recording "Save Me" with her friend, "I made a promise to myself that any song that I cut that I didn't write, I needed to feel like I wrote it at least. I needed to feel like I had been through it or experienced it in some kind of way, or it was a story that just needed to be told, even if it wasn't mine specifically. This one turned out that it was something that I could relate to one hundred and ninety percent."

Jelly Roll has become a country music sensation, topping the country charts, winning his first CMA award, and being nominated for a couple of GRAMMY Awards, one in the all-genre New Artist category and the other in the Best Country Duo/Group for his collaboration "Save Me" with Lainey Wilson.

Everyone, including his fellow country stars, is talking about him. Luke Bryan told us his thoughts on Jelly when we interviewed him recently. He said, "Jelly Roll and I have been at some events together. We hung out at a backstage festival a month and a half ago briefly. I think what Jelly Roll embodies and represents is something really, really special. When I'm around him, the way he holds himself. You are just drawn to him. He's such a star in that role."

Bryan added, "Every time I'm around the guy, he's just so intriguing and interesting. I think his form of country music speaks to a potentially forgotten box of people in country music, and he's able to really speak to that crowd."

He continued, "What makes him special is, as a fan, you get to see into his world, which is a world of a lot of people, and I think that's what you have to do to rise where he has risen. To speak to people and tell your story honestly. He tells his story the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I think that's what people love about him. You know, life's journey is not all squeaky, clean, and beautiful, with no bumps in the road. I think he lets a lot of people not feel alone."

It's been a whirlwind of a year for the native Nashvillian. Jelly took fan questions on his Insta Stories not long ago and touched on several subjects, including his mental health, after wrapping his headlining "Backroad Baptism Tour" and why he is going without his phone through the end of the year.

When a fan asked about his mental health, Jelly replied, "This is probably too honest, but exhausted and unstable. Definitely when I get through the holidays, and I've got a lot of stuff to do between now and the holidays, but when I get through the holidays, I really need to take some personal time."

Jelly Roll talked about the importance of therapy in a recent interview on Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Jelly described himself as an "old-school Southern man." He noted that his relationship with God and faith are also key parts of his evolution.

Jelly added that he believes in "God and therapy." He said he is "extremely open-minded" in his "old age." Jelly offered, "I quit searching to be happy, and I started searching to be useful." That's when everything changed for him, and he strives to "be a man of service" and to help people.

We all know his country hit songs like "Son of A Sinner," "Need A Favor," and the duet remix of his song "Save Me" with Lainey Wilson. As we continued celebrating this unique and gracious artist, we thought we would get familiar with some of his songs before he made such a significant mark in country music.

This hard rock song was released two years ago from his Ballads of the Broken album. That album is the first major-label album by Jelly Roll. "Dead Man Walking," released as a single, reached number one on the US Mainstream Rock chart. The album also included "Son of a Sinner," his first country chart-topper.

See that video here.

This song comes from his 2015 album, Therapeutic Music 5. The song talks about smoking weed and being in jail. In the song, Jelly does a lot of rapping along with singing the chorus, which includes the lyrics, "I hope that Heaven has a smoking section/ I hope that Heaven has a smoking section/ When it's said and done and we're all gone/ I hope they got a place that we can blow / I hope that Heaven has a smoking section." Jelly's mom appears in the music video.

This song came off of Jelly's 2017 album, "Addiction Kills." The music video for the song has over 53 million views and features his wife, Bunnie Xo. The couple were married in 2016. The song and video include a lot of swear words, sexual situations, and guns.

See that video here.

This song also comes from his album, Addiction Kills. The music video for the song starts with Jelly in a chair getting his hair cut and shaved. Much of the music video was filmed in Sally's Famous Kitchen in Jelly's home neighborhood, a suburb of Nashville: Antioch.

See that video here.