Bailey Zimmerman is a proud momma’s boy.
The country singer chatted to ET Canada’s Jed Tavernier at the Boots and Hearts Music Festival over the weekend at the Burl’s Creek Event Grounds in Oro-Medonte, Ontario.
Zimmerman explained how his mom, Kristi Bailey, always believed in him and even gave him $1500, which she didn’t have, to record a song he’d been working on at the beginning of his career.
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Zimmerman said of whether he thought his mom knew he was destined for greatness, “I remember her telling me when I was like 9 or 10, we would sing Taylor Swift in our single-cab blue SS truck that my grandpa built her. We would put Taylor Swift on and I would sing Taylor Swift. And she was like, ‘You’re a singer. You can sing that stuff.’
“And then now, gosh, 10, 12, 13 years later, I’m doing this stuff and we never saw it coming, of course. But when I started singing in 2020 and really tried to sing and was like, ‘I’m going to really try to do this,’ we really believed in it.”
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The hitmaker recalled how his mom had always taught him to believe in himself, adding: “No matter what you’re doing, you gotta believe in it or it’s not going to succeed. You have to love what you’re doing. My dad always said, ‘You’ll never work in your life if you love what you’re doing.'”
Zimmerman added of his mom lending him cash she didn’t have to essentially kick-start his career, “I really loved music. That’s what really made me go, ‘Okay, mom, I need $1500. I don’t have money, but I want to record this song. And I think if I get this many streams and do all this stuff, I can pay you back.’ She’s like ‘Alright, here’s $1500.’ That’s all she had too, though. She didn’t have $1500 and she gave it to me.”
He went on, “I would say she’s believed in just me her whole life. But when we started music she really believed in it, she really wanted to go down the road.”
