Sam Hunt Body Like a Back Road Album Art

Billboard is celebrating the 2010s with essays on the 100 songs that nosotros experience well-nigh define the decade that was — the songs that both shaped and reflected the music and culture of the menstruum — with assist telling their stories from some of the artists, behind-the-scenes collaborators and manufacture insiders involved.

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Sam Hunt

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Vowing to "take information technology slow only as fast as I can," Sam Chase set country and popular music on its collective ear in 2017 with "Trunk Like a Dorsum Road," an easy-going and sensuous nail that catapulted the vocaliser-songwriter's career, and won him a legion of new popular followers.

The song's insinuating, sexy groove and Hunt's laid-back, sung/spoken delivery charmed listeners, who were too pulled in by the handclaps and vibe that drew every bit much from DJ Mustard (bank check out the "hey"south in the background) as from whatsoever state production. Elements of hip-hop weren't new in country — the were familiar from Jason Aldean'southward 2011 "Dirt Road Canticle" and Florida Georgia Line and Nelly'due south 2012 collaboration on "Cruise," and even as far dorsum as 2004 when Tim McGraw appeared on Nelly's "Over and Over." Just never had the integration gone down as smoothly as information technology did on "Back Road."

The song'due south stickiness with fans led to a record-setting 34 weeks atop Hot Country Songs (a record later broken by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line'southward "Meant to Be"), earning the tune Billboard's Hot Country Song on the twelvemonth-end charts, and Hunt Top Country Creative person. It also became Hunt'due south highest charting Hot 100 hit, peaking at No. 6, and earning two Grammy nods.

Slap-up for a light-hearted vocal that Hunt initially didn't want released. He knew he needed new material for his 2017 summer headlining tour, since it had been nigh three years since his 2014 breakthrough anthology Montevallo, which unleashed four Country Airplay No. 1s and turned him into one of the genre's brightest new stars. But he wasn't sold on the playful song, which he wrote with Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne and Zach Crowell, who too produced.

"To be honest, I never actually wanted to put information technology out," he told Billboard in 2017. "I was wanting to go in a different direction musically. Sometimes equally songwriters, we take ourselves a little as well seriously."

Its sustained success fifty-fifty defenseless his label by surprise. "When I first heard 'Body Similar a Back Route,' I thought it was a fun, laid-back hit song for Sam, but no ane anticipated how much of a fingerprint it [had] on the civilization at the fourth dimension," Universal Music Grouping Nashville president Cindy Mabe tells Billboard. "Radio embraced it immediately, but the fans owned information technology every bit their mantra — and because Sam takes his time putting out music, the fans held on to this song for a actually long time."

Chase came in to the writing session with the championship. "We loved it. Information technology sounded similar information technology was already a song," McAnally says. That doesn't hateful the rest of the song, written over the course of a twelvemonth, came hands.  "I'grand positive at that place are ten verses that got scrapped," McAnally says. "We couldn't crack the code."

However, one time the vocal was finished, McAnally says he knew "100 percent" that it was a striking. "It made me think of [Mel McDaniel's 1984 hit] 'Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On'… This was a no-brainer. It feels so light in tone, just for some reason you feel information technology more than simply a ditty."

As far equally its lasting effect, McAnally says with a laugh, "I've heard that melody in about 12 songs, then it certainly influenced people. Not where you're mad, more just you're like, 'Oh I know what you were listening to before you went in to write that day.'"

The greatest legacy of "Dorsum Route" may be that information technology further dragged country fans, notoriously late adopters, into the streaming era. The song reached No. xvi on the all-genre Streaming Songs chart in 2017, 1 of simply two not-holiday country songs to hit the chart that year.

For his office, in 2017, Hunt credited the vocal's crossover success to open up-minded listeners. "There are a lot more than open up ears outside of the [land] genre, thanks to artists who have come earlier me… And because of that, I've been able to take reward of it with the song. I remember in that location were just more people open to giving it a shot and listening to it with an open up mind than maybe a few years ago."

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Source: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/sam-hunt-body-like-a-back-road-songs-that-defined-the-decade-8544233/

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