“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Indeed, Lainey Wilson is flying high above Texas in her current single, “Somewhere Over Laredo,” playing off the most iconic melodic interval in the best-known song from The Wizard of Oz, the Judy Garland movie that spawned the “Kansas” dialogue. That melodic hook is a one-octave jump that launches the chorus of “Over the Rainbow”; that element makes its way into the opening of Lainey’s “Laredo” chorus, which also rhymes with the original.
“If you say ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ fast 10 times, it kind of sounds like ‘somewhere over Laredo,’ ” Lainey notes. “That struck me as a perfect fit.”
Songwriter Andy Albert (“Thinking ’Bout You,” “Good Girl”) had a similar thought when the idea appeared seemingly out of nowhere in 2024.
“I loved how hard the rhyme was and how perfect it was with the original,” Albert recalls. “I was just like, ‘There could be something really cool here if we unpack this story.’ ”
Albert sat on “Laredo” for a bit, waiting for the right situation to present itself. Oddly enough, that moment came while in line for the VelociCoaster at Universal Orlando. Albert and songwriter Trannie Anderson (“Heart Like a Truck,” “It Won’t Be Long”) visited the theme park on Aug. 24 when they had a morning to kill between performances during a two-night songwriter show booked at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, and they threw out song ideas during the long wait for the ride. Albert pitched the “Laredo” concept, and they decided to work on it when they returned to Nashville, with Lainey in mind as a potential suitor.
Anderson sat at the piano when they started, playing a melancholy progression that established the tone. They mapped out the essential parts of the chorus melody, carefully diverting from the original after mimicking the “Some-where” octave jump.
“We were really intentional about trying to make sure we were off the melody the rest of the song,” Albert says.
An essential change from “Rainbow” came with the “Laredo” chorus’ second chord — Anderson moved from the tonic to a flatted seventh instead of the familiar minor third — and it forced the melody down a different path.
With the basics of the chorus set, they shifted to the opening verse, using a plane to put the protagonist in the clouds above Laredo. Originally, they planned for her to travel from Dallas to California, but a quick search of Google Maps suggested that flight path wouldn’t go near the Texas border. So they started the flight in Houston for realism. Traveling over Laredo stirred memories of a rodeo cowboy from the character’s past — the writers cast the couple as “Lone Star-crossed lovers” — and the chorus embraced the woman’s honky-tonk path in the setup line, deftly referencing Alan Jackson in her “chasin’ this neon rainbow” wordplay.
In short order, Lainey brought the “Heart Wranglers” — her term for her writing partnership with Anderson and (no relation) Dallas Wilson (“Heart Like a Truck,” “Can’t Have Mine”) — on the road during the Country’s Cool Again Tour. After writing a couple of songs earlier in the trip, they found themselves sitting outside Lainey’s bus at the Adams Center in Missoula, Mont., on Sept. 15, staring at the mountains and the wild Montana skies.
“I just knew I needed to show her this idea in that moment,” Anderson remembers. “I didn’t have an instrument on me, so I just sang the beginnings of this song a cappella and kept a beat on the side of my folding chair.”
Lainey was sold. They tweaked the first two stanzas and wrote a second verse that captures the loneliness that accompanies life while traveling, a scenario that was central to Dorothy’s character in Oz.
“‘Laredo’ isn’t just a place — it is a feeling,” Lainey explains. “It speaks to anyone who has ever looked back or remembered something and let that memory shape who they are. It also connects to all of those [small American] towns and people who are just trying to find their way home.”
For the bridge, Lainey wanted to slide in a few more “Rainbow” references — the bluebirds that fly in that song were transformed into blackbirds in “Laredo,” and they repurposed the “once in a lullaby” line from the original.
“She loved the thought of using the ‘once in a lullaby,’ ” Anderson says. “And I really wanted to use the ‘blackbirds’ line because that just felt so spot-on with Texas. I grew up in Texas, and there are blackbirds freaking everywhere.”
Dallas sang on the piano/vocal work tape, which Lainey, Anderson and tour mate Zach Top first heard on a private plane somewhere over Idaho. Lainey tried recording “Laredo” several times with producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Miranda Lambert), but had trouble getting the vibe right.
“It took the scenic route,” she says. “I’m talking about back roads and all. It kicked off its boots and stayed awhile. We cut it a few times, we rearranged it, we lived with it, but just kept chasing the feeling that we knew that we needed to have.”
Over the ensuing months, Anderson’s publisher — Sony Music Publishing, which controls the “Rainbow” copyright — gave its blessing to the new use of the classic, with original composers Harold Arlen and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg credited as “Laredo” co-writers. Meanwhile, while rehearsing in Copenhagen on March 12, Lainey and her band found the right direction and nailed it when they returned to Nashville. Fiddler Sav Madigan slipped in another “Rainbow” reference in the studio, applying the two-note verse melody as an instrumental enhancement to the “Laredo” bridge.
Clever as the octave jump may be, that twist is also difficult — the original is so iconic that it’s tough not to break into the “Rainbow” melody in the chorus. “It’s not easy,” Albert says. “It took me a lot of practicing before I was confident singing it at a writers round.”
“When I get to that ‘some-where’ note,” Lainey adds, “I catch myself thinking again — just like I’ve done with [the long note in] ‘Heart Like a Truck’ — ‘Why in the world do I keep doing this to myself?’ But honestly, that note is just part of what makes the song what it is, vocally. It wasn’t about the technical side of things. It was all about putting myself into that emotional place of the song.”
“Laredo” is one of five new tracks planned for the deluxe version of her Whirlwind album, due Aug. 22, and Broken Bow released it to radio via PlayMPE on May 22, employing subtle scarecrow imagery in the accompany artwork. Whether it reminds listeners of Dorothy — or of the recent Oz-derived movie, Wicked, or simply connects to fan experiences with distance and loneliness — “Laredo” tugs effectively at some difficult emotions. It’s already at No. 24 after five weeks on the Country Airplay chart dated July 5.
“It is my job as a storyteller to write music for everybody,” Lainey says. “And I feel like this song has something to offer everybody.”
