Sam Hunt
In the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Sam Hunt released two versions of the same song, “Drinking Too Much.” These were rough demos, dropped quietly on Bandcamp and distributed virally. Put this song on a mixtape between Frank Ocean’s “Nikes” and Solange’s “Cranes” and it says one thing; put it between Thomas Rhett’s “Crash and Burn” and Miranda Lambert’s “Smoking Jacket,” and it says another. This juxtaposition almost solves the problem with Sam Hunt. Both versions of “Drinking” are defiantly hip-hop but unmistakably country. It’s a song that complicates and deepens the country audience’s understanding of Hunt as a master of a genre that is in the middle of perpetual renewal.
Hunt’s detractors say his music ignores country history and is ruining country, or avoids the history of the genre. These critics include the website Saving Country Music, the Chicken Little of the genre, which keeps insulting Hunt, claiming the singer is almost the sole reason for its editor’s belief in the falling sky. But you can see the pushback — Beyoncé playing with the Dixie Chicks at the CMAs; Sturgill Simpson grumping about how people forget the Hag; Jason Isbell regularly issuing curmudgeonly dispatches.
Hunt apologists, however, don’t see the singer’s genre-sliding as a problem, especially when it comes to “Drinking Too Much.”
The track plays like a bro-y seven-minute take on Frank Ocean’s “Endless” or Drake’s “Songs From the 6.” The two versions of the song mirror each other, but they are very much not the same song. Like Ocean’s “Endless,” version 2 expands, adds decorative frills, returns to similar themes and builds but never quite provides emotional release. Part of the reason why these songs expand and move the way they do is that Hunt feels lost, so the music feels lost. He also leans on his R&B aspirations — the song is less hip-hop evading country than an excuse to use whatever gadgets he’s got in his toolbox.
But his toolbox also has country tools. “Drinking” is a heartbreak song, and it’s a drinking song, and it’s a heartbreak song about drinking. Being lost due to heartbreak and being lonely due to heartbreak are essentially country themes. The fact that it sounds like a neo-soul single is a mark of Nashville’s nostalgia for the kind of Country Soul elucidated in Charles Hughes’ brilliant book of the same name.
Hunt sings the soft ballad with a catch in his voice, against a piano — it might not sound country. But the softness and the catch have a grand lushness, reminiscent of Conway Twitty’s thick croon, spiking a weeper about domestic heartbreak with a healthy dose of schmaltz. And what’s more country than a schmaltz injection?
“Drinking” straddles the line between contemporary R&B and contemporary country, but that doesn’t dilute either genre. As with Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” and the overblown controversy about whether it belongs at the CMA, songs don’t need to abide by purity codes to be good. Country and hip-hop are both genres with deep Southern roots, and in the South, fears about purity are full of racial and class signifiers. Having Hunt (and Bey) in the mix dismantles those signs.
Working against purity is also a sign of trust in the artist. Beyoncé tells us that country lessons belong in country as a genre. Hunt tells us that his songs are country because he’s a country guy, singing for country people. Part of it is recognizing that genre can and should defy audience expectations.
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