Converting the Skeptics: A Curated Guide to Sam Hunt

2010s R&B-country at its most irresistible

Welcome back to Don’t Rock the Inbox! This is the another iteration of one of our new schemes: Instead of having new (and some old) country round-ups for paying subscribers every Friday, we’re shaking things up — including with some themed, curated guides coupled with a playlist. Subscribe to get access, and listen along! And catch up on our last three guides, on Reba, Eric Church and Kip Moore.

By Natalie

Hunt week continues here on DRTI — if you haven’t had the chance to read my in-depth Hunt anniversary analysis (more in-depth, really, than anyone asked for) from Tuesday, here it is. But! The songs, as ever, tell the story themselves, probably better than I can. So I’m going to go into some of my Hunt faves here, beyond “Body Like A Back Road” and hopefully not just “all of them” (he does have some duds, but his output is so limited that there really aren’t many!). He’s a crucial plank of Marissa’s and my perennial “you can’t write off everything on current country radio wholesale even though a lot of it is extremely redundant and mid” platform (we need a better slogan) — the man bleeds hooks, and his fine-tuned take on pop country tends to feel less mechanical than the work of many of his peers (in spite of the fact that it is meticulously edited).

Coming into this guessing that most of you have heard not just “Body Like A Back Road” but at least one or two of the Montevallo hits; so, we’ll start with the best of his new stuff (yes, 2021 is new in Sam Hunt years). “23” is instantly compelling; Hunt, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne actually wrote the song to the track (are we sensing a hip-hop-pilled theme here) by taking a beachside ride in McAnally’s vintage truck — and that is exactly what it sounds like. A little bit of pitch-perfect summertime sadness: “You’ll always have your first last name, standing in that July rain…”