Sophia Michaels
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon welcomed Nashville musicians Hardy and Lainey Wilson to the stage on Wednesday night for a moving performance of their collaboration “Wait in the Truck.” Off Hardy’s latest album The Mockingbird & The Crow, the harrowing ballad finds the pair playing the roles of a domestic abuse victim and the passerby who takes justice into his own hands, even if it costs him his own freedom.
“I listened to it and I was like, ‘Wow, this is the kind of music that I grew up listening to,’” Wilson told Rolling Stone last year. “Whether it was ‘Thunder Rolls’ or ‘Whiskey Lullaby,’ anything like that. I love the message — it’s shining a little bit of light on a really dark subject.”
Wilson and Hardy’s perspective-shifting back and forth on The Tonight Show was backed by a three-piece band. They didn’t have the same theme-adhering props available, like the pickup truck or fog that colored their performance of the song at the Country Music Awards last year, but their lyrical delivery played out like a film scene.
Of collaborating with Wilson on the murder ballad, Hardy shared with Rolling Stone: “She’s unapologetically herself. She’s very authentic. I care so much about that song and I wanted the fans to believe every word of what the woman in the song had to say, and she has the most believable voice.”
