A new song from Sam Hunt was just released! The Georgia native dropped “Hard to Forget,” which he wrote with seven other writers, including Songland‘s Shane McAnally. “Hard to Forget” is the third song Hunt has released from his upcoming sophomore Southside album.
“Hard to Forget” joins “Kinfolks” and “Sinning With You” as tracks Hunt has previewed in advance of his next record.
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“I feel like it’s important that we break down some walls and barriers when it comes to social groups we align ourselves with, and also the music we listen to,” Hunt hinted to Rolling Stone, discussing his first project since Montevallo was released in 2014. “I’ve never wanted to not include a reference [to classic country] because the group that I belong to thinks it doesn’t fit. The less we genre the music, the less we genre ourselves as people.”
Hunt’s “Sinning With You” might come across as controversial to some, but is really just his honest reflection on some of the struggles he has had with the beliefs he grew up with, and discerning which ones he still identifies as truth.
“It’s a metaphor for a small town guy who was raised with traditional values, a lot of those rooted in church and faith,” Hunt previously said of the song. “Most of the value systems that I grew up around are rooted in religion and church.
“You start to read books and talk to people who grew up in different backgrounds, and you try to collect that knowledge and find some meaning, some truth,” he continued. “It speaks to the broader pursuit of truth and understanding, in terms of how you are supposed to live your life.”
It wasn’t until Hunt left home that he realized he may not believe some of the things he did as a child.
“I didn’t realize until I left my hometown that I had been so, I don’t want to say programmed, but maybe programmed, conditioned to kind of think certain things without questioning them too much,” the Georgia native shared with Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music’s Beats 1. “But I guess naturally inquisitive, so I kind of need to know the whys behind everything. So I started I guess kind of questioning the things that I was doing without thinking too much about them at about 18, 19, 20.
“And then I moved out of town and realized there were different perspectives and different thoughts,” he continued. “I guess processes about different things in life and I kind of started to contemplate those things too, like everybody else does.”
Southside will be released on April 3.
Photo Credit: Kevin Winter / Getty Images for Stagecoach
