In the past, singers used to climb the ranks in their own genre before breaking into the mainstream. In country, rap, or R&B, there was a path: first, you showed that you could play by the rules. After proving your ability to color within the lines, you could peel off. But in a fast-moving world full of hybridized pop forms, the preamble is no longer necessary. So Sam Hunt‘s debut album, Montevallo, comes from a guy with a hit on the country charts, but has little to identify it as country.
Subtle choices code Montevallo as Nashville fare: a steel guitar here, a close harmony with a female backing vocalist there. But it’s easy to imagine a slightly altered version of this album. With the exception of “Raised On It” — a credential-establishing number in the vein of Blake Shelton‘s “Boys Round Here” or Eric Church‘s “Guys Like Me” — you could scrub Montevallo clean of any country signifiers and hardly change a single song. Eighty percent of this album could compete easily in the top 40. The lead single, “Leave The Night On,” is currently sitting at No. 38 on the Hot 100, and it’s one of the more country-sounding tracks here.
Hunt shows his hand immediately: the album opens with “Take Your Time,” which finds the singer speaking quickly and melodically in a style he first unveiled earlier this year on his X2C EP. After a few moments, Hunt moves into a multi-tracked R&B croon. When the chorus arrives, it suddenly sounds like 3 Doors Down‘s “Here Without You.”
The singer leads with a right hook, but Montevallo isn’t as shocking as it might be: four of these songs, including two of the most radical-sounding, already came out on X2C. On top of that, Hunt includes “Cop Car,” which he released a while ago on an acoustic mixtape (Keith Urban also recorded a version that went to No. 4 on the Hot Country Songs chart last year). And “Make Me Miss You” has been floating around the web in video form, performed by Hunt alone on a piano. That leaves just a handful of fresh tracks.
Those serve to further demonstrate Hunt’s affinity for all forms of pop. “Single in the Summer” is elegantly mournful in the mode of Lana Del Rey. There is a whirring synthesizer, a programmed beat, and a self-effacing vocal common in the post-Drake mainstream: “I’ve gone off the deep end, the company I’m keeping is messing me up/ the good girls are home sleeping, while I’m out creepin’ till the sun comes up.”
Jason Aldean & Sam Hunt Chart New Path
Just one thing ties Hunt to country: the love of wordplay in his songwriting. Usually “take your time” is used to mean “no rush;” but Hunt turns the expression on its head — he wants to take your time. He relishes the overlapping sounds of “ecstasy” and “ex to see,” and enjoys driving home the big difference that a small word can make (“you’ve gotta move or move on”). Nashville still has a unique sense of phrasing that can produce intricate, clever songs, no matter how they are produced. In a world of few genre distinctions, that won’t be unique to country much longer.