There aren’t many success stories in country music like Sam Hunt’s. The Georgia-born ex-quarterback seemed to come out of nowhere in the mid-2010s and changed the game, first penning songs for other singers after arriving in Nashville, then taking center stage as a recording artist with groundbreaking 2014 album Montevallo. By 2017 he had broken the record for most weeks (34) at the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart with hit single “Body Like a Back Road.”
Hunt’s lyrical flow, wordsmithing talent and abilities to both express from a personal place and see things through the eyes of others are primary factors in his rise to the top. He also has a vision for his own brand of country music that drew on R&B and hip-hop beats as well as an appreciation for tradition.
The latter is best exemplified on “Hard to Forget” from 2020’s Southside, which samples the first line from honky-tonk star Webb Pierce’s 1953 hit “There Stands the Glass” without effects before aligning it with an electronic rhythm and segueing into a narrative about unrequited love.
Executing songs like successful gridiron plays is Hunt’s forte, but his inner circle includes writers and producers such as Zach Crowell, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. He has a muse in wife Hannah Lee Fowler, who he met while playing football for University of Alabama at Birmingham. Hunt had bought a guitar before he left Cedartown, Ga. for college, where he studied philosophy and business. He became proficient and began writing free-verse lyrics, developing his own style in the process.
Two months after trying out for the NFL he was in Nashville, quickly becoming immersed in the culture and networking himself into the industry. He co-wrote “Come Over” for Kenny Chesney with McAnally and Osborne, then Keith Urban’s single “Cop Car” with Crowell, and Billy Currington’s “We Are Tonight” with Osborne. Hunt recorded the latter two songs for Montevallo, but his first No. 1 would be a cowrite with McAnally and Osborne, “Leave the Night On.”
The album is named for Fowler’s hometown. Although Hunt may have dreamed of being a star, he may not have considered the impact the songs on Montevallo would have on Fowler’s privacy, which he would address in the lyrics of “Drinkin’ Too Much” on Southside. The couple’s relationship would become tabloid fodder as Fowler appeared with Hunt at awards shows. They were married in 2017, but alleged infidelities led Fowler to file for divorce in February 2022.
However, Fowler, the inspiration for “Body Like a Back Road,” changed her mind by May, and the following month she gave birth to a daughter. Now Hunt has a whole new set of circumstances to turn into compositions and a shot at personal redemption as he undertakes his Outskirts Tour this summer. The tour takes its name from his latest single, which precedes a third studio album that could be out by the end of the year. Expect a theme of returning to small-town roots in much of the new material, and more hip-hop beats blended with country tradition.
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