Sam Hunt is climbing the country charts with his latest smash, “Hard to Forget,” and he says his new album SOUTHSIDE pretty much fell into place when he and his co-writers finished the song.

“I heard the Webb Pierce sample and knew I had to write a song with that sample included in the track,” says Sam. “I didn’t have an idea at the time but I had started this other song with another couple buddies of mine, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, and we started this song and bounced around this idea hard to for ‘Hard to Forget’ and it didn’t sound anything like the version on the record. I had this track and knew I needed a classic title like ‘Hard to Forget’ that just was a play on words. And I’ve done that with other titles but I wanted a classic country title with a play on words like ‘Hard to Forget.’ So, I took that title and highjacked it from the original song and scrapped everything and started over with this Webb Pierce track and this just came out really quickly and that was that. Honestly, the record was all over the place at that point and as soon as that song was finished it all seemed to come together – I think I wrote three or four more songs quickly after that. It was like ‘Okay, we got a record. Let’s go.’”

SOUTHSIDE is the first full album since Hunt’s critically acclaimed, GRAMMY-nominated, Triple-Platinum-selling debut, Montevallo, which was released nearly six years ago in 2014.