Lainey Wilson is close friends with her recent CMA Awards co-hosts, Luke Bryan and Peyton Manning. But apparently, she isn’t as close to them as her longtime boyfriend, Devlin “Duck” Hodges. The country music superstar reveals that the three men are close friends, so much so that she is sometimes left out.

“He Facetimes me and my boyfriend Duck all the time,” Wilson tells Country Countdown USA, speaking of Bryan. “The other day, he called Duck and said, ‘Hey man, I’m going to Arkansas to go hunting if you want to join me.’ I’m like, ‘I can duck hunt too. What about me?’ Peyton and Duck are also buddies.”

Wilson recently joined Bryan for his annual Crash My Playa event, held this year in Mexico. But she did draw the line at joining Bryan for one of his early hits.

“Luke Bryan can throw a party,” Wilson boasts. “He brought me this huge margarita glass with watermelon moonshine and a watermelon in it. He asked, ‘You want to join me for ‘Country Girl Shake It For Me?’ I said, ‘You want me to shake it? That ain’t happening. I’m gonna sit down.’

Wilson and Hodges met in 2021, but didn’t go public with their relationship until 2023. It wasn’t until Hodges that Wilson says she was able to write love songs, which she did for her latest Whirlwind album. Included on the record is her current Top 5 single, “4X4XU,” inspired by Hodges.

“The truth is, I write what I know, and I finally found a man worth writing about,” Wilson says. “So you know it’s a love song because y’all probably thought, ‘Dang, she ain’t got it in her, she ain’t got it in her’… but I do. I got me a cheerleader.”

Ahead of the release of Whirlwind, the Louisiana native hinted that the project would show a new, softer side of her, through her music.

“I do feel like it’s going to show a different side of me,” Wilson tells Audacy’s Katie & Company. “I am in love, which is weird for me. I’m actually able to write those kind of songs. I will say, I don’t think I will ever be the kind of love songwriter that’s going to be like mushy-gushy, pour my heart out to you. I think it’s going to be more like, I’m a strong woman, and I got a man who’s okay with it kind of thing. I’m excited to share this side of my life.”