Image Courtesy UMG/David McClisterSam Hunt sings all the way through his debut #1 hit, “Leave the Night On” but he usually moves between singing and speaking the lyrics on many of his songs, including his latest single, “Take Your Time.” The song’s lyrics about smooth-talking a beautiful girl into a date lend themselves to Sam’s spoken-word delivery. While there are some R&B elements to the song, “Take Your Time” wouldn’t be considered a rap song. It turns out Sam is just fine with “Take Your Time” being a little hard to define.
“When I wrote it, it was the first time I sort of questioned the parameters of what I thought I could write and started to say, ‘Why not?'” Sam tells ABC News Radio. “I really like this direction, and even though folks might not consider it within the genre’s boundaries, I’m just gonna write it anyway whether it ever has a life or not. I just love this style.”
While some of country music’s biggest legends — like George Jones and George Strait — often included spoken-word sections in their songs, one of Sam’s early co-writers wouldn’t even consider letting Sam speak his lyrics instead of sing them.
Looking back on a session with hit writer Josh Osborne and another unnamed writer, Sam says, “[I] started doing this talking thing, and the other co-writer we were writing with sort of looked at me like, ‘What in the world? We can’t do that. We’re not doing that.’ But Josh spoke up afterwards and was like, ‘Man, I really loved what you were doing. I thought that was really cool.'”
Sam and Josh left that negative writer behind and moved on to work with Shane McAnally, who just won CMA Song of the Year for co-writing Kacey Musgraves‘ “Follow Your Arrow.” That co-writing session produced “Take Your Time.”
“He had the same open mind that Josh did,” Sam says of adding Shane to the writing mix. “So, we went with it.”
“Take Your Time” is the lead track on Sam’s hit debut album, Montevallo, available now.
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