Nancy Brooks // Country Writer, Beasley Media Group
December 8th, 2021
Sam Hunt came into country music and made his mark in 2014 with his debut album Montevallo, which was nominated for Best Country Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards in 2015. His towering, good looks made Sam an instant country star. As we celebrate his 37th birthday today (12/8), we take a look at and countdown his eight best songs.
An upbeat fun song and a big hit for Sam. It’s one of his signature songs.
Hunt discussed the process of making the song, saying it was born when he was "singing that chorus melody late one night while riding around trying to come up with song ideas.”
In the music video for this song, his second radio single, Sam fights a man who was abusing his girlfriend, freeing up the woman to leave with her baby. This song was actually promoted to pop radio six months after its country release.
Hunt said of writing the song's content, "In the 90s, there was no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or more, so break ups in the 90's were not easier. The trick was not filling it up with a bunch of technology references and trying to find the story within it. It's just the world's so much smaller now."
This song spent 20 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart – this made Sam the solo country artist with the second longest run at the top of the 59-year-old “Hot Country Songs” chart. Hank Snow's, "I'm Moving On" spent 21 weeks at the top.
Another chart-topper for Hunt. Rolling Stone reviewed the song saying in part, "Acoustic guitar arpeggios that lead into big, bright choruses of banjo, vocal snippets, and wah-wah guitar." Well said.
The first song that introduced us to this former football player from Georgia. It was his first single, and his first number one song.
Just as music critics started saying that Sam just wasn’t country enough, he kicked off a song with an original recording of Webb Pearce’s 1953 hit, “There Stands The Glass.”
