Sam Hunt Soils Himself While Sampling Webb Pierce Track

Down with Pop Country 81 Comments

WARNING: Language

Haha. Okay… So this is how Sam Hunt is making his music, “… more traditional in terms of the genre … that’s definitely where the songs are leaning at this point,” like he promised us he was doing last summer? By filching a piece of a sacred Webb Pierce classic and misappropriating it for a shitty, derivative drum-looped pop song that sounds like everything else in popular music?

About the only solid Sam is doing for actual country music with his new track “Hard To Forget” is offering a outstanding side-by-side comparison of how eloquent and heartfelt country music used to be, and what a fetid, steaming shite roll it has become thanks to hacks like Sam Hunt. The bowel movement that is Sam Hunt’s “Hard To Forget” is far from solid. It’s one of those nasty deeds where no matter how much you wipe afterwards, you never get it all, like there’s a Sharpie stuck up your rear end.

Do I really even need to offer my angry little words toward this stupid song? Doesn’t all this go without saying? Birds will fly upside down over Sam Hunt’s “Hard To Forget” because it’s not even worth shitting on. So let’s keep this short. The truly offensive thing here is the fact that Sam Hunt really does believe he’s doing a good turn toward traditional country by sampling Webb Pierce’s “There Stands The Glass.” Yet Hunt might as well have walked into a studio, had the engineers bring the feeders up, and told all traditional country fans calmly and politely to go fuck themselves.

In a similar fashion to Keith Urban’s “Coming Home” that makes a mockery of the iconic guitar opening to Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried,” “There Stands The Glass” is done a much greater level worse in the minds of those who love true country music because of the sample, and especially because just like Keith Urban, Sam Hunt (or his producer minions) electronically transmogrified the sample so much, it loses any soul the original Webb Pierce performance had. Specifically, they modulated Webb’s voice higher to fit the key of Sam Hunt’s composition as opposed to vice versa, making Webb Pierce sound way more nasally and archaic than he actually did.

In fact it’s arguably the Webb Pierce sample that ruins “Hard To Forget.” Otherwise it’s a pretty lame, but innocuous pop song that would just be one of many from Sam Hunt. The premise in the songwriting of “Hard To Forget” is fine. But the passive corporate music listeners who will interface with this song will wonder why the hell some old fuddy duddy is singing on this otherwise passable Sam Hunt song. They won’t be rushing to Spotify to sample the Webb Pierce catalog and discover a burning love for traditional country music.

By all accounts, “Hard To Forget” is just going to be an album track from Sam Hunt’s new record, not a proper single—at least at this point. So let’s not get too hot and bothered. But in trying to ingratiate himself to traditional country fans, Sam Hunt has slapped them across the face, however inadvertent it might be, and re-attained his title as the new Antichrist of modern country. In a career full of lows, somehow, Sam Hunt figured out how to do himself one worse.

Two Guns DOWN! (0/10)

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