It’s a great day to be a Sam Hunt fan: The country singer announced via Instagram on Tuesday (May 15) that he would release a brand-new single, “Downtown’s Dead,” on May 16. It’s his first single since the February 2017 release of “Body Like a Back Road,” a song that achieved massive popularity with Hunt’s fanbase and sat at the top of the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart for 25 consecutive weeks, smashing the previousl record
Despite the enormous success of that single as well as his debut album, Montevallo, Hunt stepped away from his musical career in 2017. “I’m at a place in my career and in my lie where I’m not willing to give music 100 percent of me anymore,” he told The Boot in an interview in July of 2017. The year before, he had focused heavily on winning back his on-again, off-again girlfriend (and now wife), Hannah Lee Fowler, including making seven trips to Hawaii in 2016 to win her back. Hunt has said that it’s important to him to support Fowler as much as she supports him, and scaling back on musical projects allows him to focus more on his family.
After wiping his Instagram account, Hunt started fresh with a photo of himself staring at a vague point in the distance, with the succinct caption, “New single tomorrow….’Downtown’s Dead.'”
Hunt wrote the new track with Shane McAnally, Zach Crowell and Josh Osborne — the same co-writers behind “Body Like a Back Road.” In fact, some configuration of the foursome appear in every track on Montevallo.
One day after releasing “Downtown’s Dead,” Sam Hunt sat with SiriusXM host Storme Warren to discuss the new song, which depicts a guy feeling the emptiness of his constant-party existence.
There’s that line in the bridge: ‘What am I doing with my life,’ where he snaps out of it a little bit. The whole song is about him snapping out of it,” says Hunt, who also points out that it doubles as a statement about his own fame. His rapid rise with Montevallo and singles like “Take Your Time” and “Break Up in a Small Town” transformed him into a massive star, where he started feeling as if his life had shifted entirely in one direction and left no space for reflection.
“I love a good time and I love the environment of a concert or going downtown,” he says. “But life sort of turned into a 24/7 version of that and I needed a little more balance. A full diet of that leaves you feeling a little empty.”
While Hunt has not released new music since February of 2017, he has continued to tour, with his own headlining 2017 15 in a 30 Tour. He is also planning some stadium dates with Luke Bryan in 2018 as well as headlining the 2018 Taste of Country Music Festival in June.
