{"id":142689,"date":"2025-11-19T08:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T08:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/142689\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T08:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T08:57:07","slug":"stephen-wilson-jr-salutes-the-working-class-in-new-song-gary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/142689\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Wilson Jr. Salutes the Working Class in New Song ‘Gary’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEarlier this year, Stephen Wilson Jr.<\/a> previewed his new song \u201cGary\u201d during a sold-out concert at Nashville\u2019s Brooklyn Bowl and, soon afterward, talked at length to Rolling Stone about its meaning. The country singer-songwriter<\/a> who mixes grunge sounds with heartland rock finally dropped the studio version of \u201cGary\u201d early Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI grew up in a body shop. My family, every one of them can fix anything, not because they\u2019re just like these mechanical geniuses, but because they just had to fix everything,\u201d Wilson told RS. \u201cThere\u2019s no money to hire somebody to fix something, so you just got to learn how to fix it. And where I come from, the Garys, they get it done. It\u2019s like, \u2018Man, you\u2019re gonna need to call Gary.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWilson gave the live debut of \u201cGary\u201d on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday night and followed it by releasing the song on streaming services. \u201cGary\u201d is the first single off his forthcoming album, the follow-up to 2023\u2019s acclaimed Son of Dad LP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTime leaves town but the minute hand stays\/Ain\u2019t a lot of boys named Gary these days,\u201d Wilson sings, lamenting a present where dirty hands aren\u2019t as appreciated as they once were.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI grew up in a generation where it\u2019s like you go to college and to hell with trades,\u201d he told Rolling Stone. \u201cBut here we are in society that\u2019s running out of Garys. And it\u2019s going to be scary if we ain\u2019t got our Garys. I hope we recognize and start celebrating them instead of forgetting about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tWilson recently announced his Gary the Torch tour, a new string of shows that kicks off March 6 in Columbus, Ohio, and hits major cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. Ahead of the new tour, Wilson wraps up 2025 with concerts in Las Vegas and a pair of gigs at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville next week.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Indiana native is also slated to perform at the 2025 CMA Awards on Wednesday night. He\u2019ll do double duty onstage in Nashville, singing his reimagined take on Ben E. King\u2019s \u201cStand by Me\u201d<\/a> and partnering up with Shaboozey for their collab \u201cTook a Walk.\u201d Wilson is nominated for New Artist of the Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year, Stephen Wilson Jr. previewed his new song \u201cGary\u201d during a sold-out concert at Nashville\u2019s Brooklyn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,96496,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-142689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-stephen-wilson-jr","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}