Sam Hunt stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to talk about his new EP, the injuries he got while playing college sports, why he takes so long to write songs and more!
Hunt’s new EP, Locked Up, is out now and it features four new songs including his current single “Outskirts” that is climbing up the charts. It’s hard for him to put out music and he doesn’t think he could write a song about anything and have it been good. He feels like the sweet spot for what he can write about that works for him is so small that a lot of ideas come along that he’ll pass on. The legacy of Hunt as a songwriter is he is much more of a perfectionist or needs to sit on it much longer than the average songwriter. He thinks he got that reputation during a three-year period where he was overthinking his work. He went on tour and didn’t write for two years and when he got back into the studio, he tried finding the formula that worked on his first album but struggled. He’s not in that spot anymore and tends to just move forward now and get the song written, which is what most songwriters do, and he’s found it’s worked better.
“Body Like a Backroad” is one of the songs that took him a long time to write. The problem was there were so many ways he could miss with the lyrics. He wanted to make sure the song gave listeners the right vision and feeling. It was a delicate tightrope walk where he felt like he had to get it just right and he wanted it to sound like it just came from the top of his head, but it took a lot of effort to get it that way. He felt like it was overwritten at first because every line referenced a back road, so it took a while to find the sweet spot and make it perfect for him to release. All songwriters value different things when they create a song. Some want the melody to be perfect, but Hunt has always been more attracted to the lyrics.
Hunt has a new song on his EP called “Locked Up” and shared he had to be in a room with people he really trusted to write a song like that. It’s hard to write and get personal with someone you don’t really know, and you’re worried they’ll tell people your personal business, so he still writes with the same two or three people he’s had a longtime relationship with. Another song on his new EP called “Country House” is a song he leaned into because he felt it fit the build of the theme, he’s going for with his music these days. It’s a lighthearted song that he used to take for granted, but now thinks those songs hold a lot of value because you can listen to them in the car with your kids.
Prior to his music career, Hunt played football at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and only played in seven games during the 2006 season due to injuries. He had two back surgeries in college that still bother him all the time. He thinks the next step to help that is to get the “Tiger Woods” surgery done which is where they fuse your discs together, but he doesn’t like the idea of having that done.
Raymundo is a huge Hunt fan and summed up his shows as “electrifying” and the perfect mix of old school meets new school. He said there’s an aura you can feel at a Hunt show and recalled the first time he saw him perform at a Dave and Busters in 2014. The venue was too small to hold him, and the cops were called because people were flipping tables. That was the first time Hunt realized he was really starting to become a big artist.
Hunt’s Locked Up Tour kicks off June 28th with opening acts Russell Dickerson and George Birge.