We will — to decide in which genre to slot you!
[Video]
[6.10]
Anthony Easton: Last year was a banner year for R&B, and it’s typical of the genre-in-flux breakdown in Nashville that one of the best slow jam singers ended being labelled as country. This is his least Nashville-sounding album, and for a song that could be a sleazy come-on (or is a sleazy come-on), it manages a kind of earnestness. I wonder if it would be less earnest or less idealized if he didn’t raid the country larder — the paratext might be more interesting than the text — but Hunt’s voice is so smooth and smart that the genre play melts into sex play. That I can’t tell the difference is fascinating, even if the music wasn’t good. And the music is fantastic.
[8]
Jonathan Bradley: I don’t believe Sam Hunt’s spoken word, which might be more about me than him: the artifice of quasi-natural dialogue in country music, particularly addressed in a laconic second person, sounds weirdly intimate. There’s a sense he might be trying to talk directly to me — me, the man writing this blurb, and with all of the attendant homoeroticism implied by that individuated interpretation. When Hunt starts singing, outside his notably naturalistic R&B phrasings — the best precursor of which, though it is vastly different in execution, is Tim McGraw on “Over and Over” — the most remarkable quality is how earnest and innocuous his come-ons sound. “I don’t wanna steal your freedom,” he demurs. “I don’t wanna make you love me.” All he wants is my time, and the strange thing is that the theft sounds both felonious and forgivable. There are songs I like better on his album, Montevallo, but I appreciate it for containing baroque byways like this one.
[8]
Alfred Soto: The combination of sprechtsung and singing the last word of each verse doesn’t work: it underlines the conventionality of the text. “I don’t want to steal your freedom/I don’t want to change your mind” — so what then DO you want? Sing it or recite it.
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: I’m always wondering when rap and country bleed over because they’re both cosmic opposites and unlikely kinfolk. I mean, there’s the whole thing of American art-forms being associated with a working class, but also the “Everything But Rap & Country” meme is a thing people are familiar with. Even someone who has a phobia of #AMERICANA like me can see the tenuous claims. Usually those we end up in Cowboy Troy/”Freestyle” gimmicky territories on the hayseed-side while ‘country-rap’ is a healthier more diverse realm. So with this hurried little “I’m actually doing this kind of, uh, off the cuff spoken to you, girl — yeah, you in the audience of radio land” thing sounding like the country version of the Drake bit to me. And… I appreciate it? It’s an attempt at taking the way songwriting has common ground even in the most distant of places and trying to draw from it, especially playing up the cliches and the “Celebrate Diversity” bullshit. I don’t like the song, but it made me briefly curious. Now I just need Sam Hunt to rewrite Kevin Gates’ “Just Ride” into a country song (probably not that impossible) and I’d probably be obligated to fuck with him.
[5]
Crystal Leww: Not all love songs have to be about the great loves in life, and sometimes the great loves in our lives come from the boys who start out as the ones who just casually worm their way into your busy schedule and messy, already wounded heart. When they’re gone, you’re left with a hoodie that smells like them after months of time in bed and lines from the first night you met like “Your eyes are so intimidating,” like who the fuck says that? Yeah, he did. He crossed the bar to say hi, which is normally kind of obnoxious, but you noticed his broad shoulders and understanding eyes as soon as he walked into the room. Boys like Sam Hunt will ruin your life.
[9]
Thomas Inskeep: Calling Hunt the Drake of country just because he does that talk-sing thing, as I’ve heard some critics do, smacks of laziness. Sure, there’s a little R&B influence here, but not exceptionally so; more than anything it’s just lazy pop-country.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: Sometime after being anointed as country’s next top bro, Hunt evidently started listening to a lot of Drake; he’s jacked both his cadence (“and I know your name, causeeverybodyinhere knows your name” is where it starts) and his faux-sensitive pickup shtick. Acknowledging that “some guy’s getting too close trying to pick you up” and “one of your friends is supposed to save you from random guys” means nothing when you’re doing the exact same thing; she might not’ve told him to go hell, but if he has to say “no, girl, I’m not wasted,” she basically already has. As for the music, the twinkling verses and slipstream speech-sing might suggest something new, but the lumbering country chorus reveals Hunt’s true intentions.
[5]
Will Adams: The sensitive dude doth protest too much, methinks.
[5]
Alex Ostroff: The verses are, at first, a world of N O P E. Hunt’s pick-up lines consist of sub-Drake ‘sensitivity’ without Aubrey’s charisma and sub-Seth Cohen rambling self-deprecation that’s real-world unattractive instead of T.V. charming. Calling someone attractive ‘intimidating’ is the kind of thing I’d say on my worst days, too in my head to remember that a lack of confidence isn’t a cute look. But Sam Hunt is cute. Once he starts singing instead of awkwardly pattering, he does lovely things with his mouth. (I meant his phrasing. Honestly.) Once he’s singing “I don’t want to steal your covers / I just want to take your time,” nothing sounds more appealing than waking up bereft of blankets. (Blow my phone up, Sam! Smother me in text messages! Call me!) This is why I don’t talk to boys in bars. I’m weak.
[8]
Brad Shoup: He can pout, too! With loads of dread echo straight out of Hot 100 depictions of debauchery, and some sorta-startling spoken-word that morphs that good ol’ R&B phrasing. Oh, and a chorus that aspires to the mild swells of late ’90s pop ballads. He’s really putting quite a career together.
[6]