Southsider Sam breaks all the rules of country
‘I wish I had been more prepared for what life threw at me’
Sam Hunt might not be the first US country artist to incorporate elements of hip hop and modern r’n’b into his music, but he is surely the first to do so without sounding like a novelty act. He has also managed to be commercially successful, crossing over into the mainstream charts. His two albums to date, Montevallo and Southside have gone top ten in the US Billboard Top 200 and to number one in Billboard’s Country charts.
The part of Georgia in which he grew up, he says, was like ‘a melting pot of lots of different backgrounds.’ This greatly influenced what he listened to and has ultimately been reflected in his musical style.
‘I grew up in Cedartown, which is about an hour from Atlanta, where there is so much r’n’b and hip hop music. If you live that close, it was going to be around,’ he says.
‘In the town where I lived, country music and classic rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hank Williams Jr overlapped with Usher and Boyz II Men. There was gangsta rap like Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and music all about love-making.
‘I was able to get into to the music even though I didn’t know what they were talking about at 10, 11, 12,’ he says.
What Hunt has done so well is keep his music identifiably country but give it a danceable groove. However, 2016, The opening track of Southside, a slow song of love lost plays it with a straight country bat.
The next song Hard To Forget, samples 1950s singer
Webb Pierce’s There Stands
The Glass before we hear a reggae and hip-hop-influenced rhythm and backing track. Body Like A Back Road and That Ain’t Beautiful are marked by their danceability.
Surely, I put it to him, he met resistance and antipathy from many in the notoriously conservative country music community.
‘There is room for traditional country and I listen to that music as a fan but I don’t want to only listen to that. I like artists who hop genres. I think there is room for everyone and enough people with broad tastes to appreciate it all,’ he says.
There was a gap of over five years between 2014’s Montevallo and Southside which was released at the beginning of April. In that time, he observed Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus top the Billboard charts for a recordbreaking 19 weeks in 2019 with Old Town Road. He is sanguine about that record’s success even though it looked like someone was aping his ideas.
‘I thought a lot of things around all that,’ he says.
‘I know the modern country music fan. When you combine the language that he used on that song – he went straight for country tropes – talking about an old town road and a horse but his approach was fresh. It felt good to me because it tapped into what I was trying to do as well. If you combine ideas and influences in the right way then it can evoke a feeling and that’s what that song did.’
The success of Montevallo took a toll on his personal life. He left behind the girl that inspired many of the debut album’s songs and Southside reflects his conflicts about what he was sacrificing for fame.
‘I wish that I had been more prepared for what life had to throw at me in between putting out the last record and this one,’ he says.
Three years had flown by and I hadn’t really seen anybody except the members of the band and the crew. My first record came out five and a half years ago, but the songs were written in the three years before that.
‘This record is about deciding whether to move on from past loves or rekindling them. Thinking if you are going to commit to a relationship and have kids and all those things.’
The travails of his and then partner Hannah’s on-off relationship are played out on Southside, but it is she who taps out the notes to How Great Thou Art after the closing track Drinkin’ Too Much and he went on to marry her.
‘Whenever all this is over, I want to spend more time over in Europe and build a relationship with fans there the way I have in the States,’ he says.
‘Hannah would love to come to Ireland. I’ve played there a couple of times but she’s not been. Hopefully, that won’t be too long.’ Amen to that.
Sam Hunt - Southside is out now