Quotes from Sam Hunt

I played quarterback, and it was a leadership position, and even though I'm doing a solo thing now, a lot of my success is a part of assembling this team of people who are really, really talented, and their position doesn't put them out front the way mine does, but it's still a team effort.

It wasn't until I was 18, when I was graduating high school, that I went and bought a guitar on a whim.

I like doing stuff like, for instance, in the 'Leave the Night On' video, I had on a plain white T-shirt. I just wanted to do something to it to make it a little different, so I just cut a big strip out of the side, from the shirttail up to my armpit, and cut a big red strip out of another T-shirt and just sewed it in there.

Prior to getting into music, I interacted with, on a daily basis, about 5-10 percent of the people that I've interacted with since then. I've been meeting people from different backgrounds and different cultures. That did allow for a lot of change. I've changed as a product of that, but it's been positive.

On my teams, as a guy who grew up hunting and fishing, I was in the minority in terms of music and lifestyle. I became good friends with people who listened to R&B and rap. But it wasn't just an issue of being around it - I was naturally drawn to it right off the bat.

A good story gives you more of a license to be forward and progressive with the music.

People throw things at me sometimes, at big festivals.

I really feel like I honed in on a sound and a style of writing that best fits me.

You want to stand out and be unique and do something different. I always try to zig when they zag - I guess it's a football term, but it applies to a lot of different areas of life.

I realized after writing songs for years how important it is. Whether it provides a living for me or not, that creative outlet is something I need.

I was really only around country music on the radio, and I think because I grew up so close to Atlanta, and R&B was such a big part of that culture, by proximity I think a lot of that music influenced me without knowing it.

I was pretty gung-ho about music and pursuing that and figuring that whole thing out, so I was wide-eyed and ready to go when I moved to Nashville. I never looked back.

The most flattering thing I hear is, 'I didn't think I liked country music before I heard your record.'

I've had a lot of folks tell me that my songs weren't quite country because they didn't really sound like anybody that had come along and done it before me. I felt a little out of place for a while.

Once it's out there in the universe, it's serving its purpose, and I'm proud to have other folks hear the music that I was a part of making.

Fortunately, the music from the first record really connected with people, and I was really proud of that.

It's just really fulfilling to celebrate with a group of folks, a team, than it is personally.

The key to me is being different not for the sake of being different, but being the most authentic version of what you do. And definitely it takes a willingness to be different, because there was resistance for me early on, and I feel like that's usually the case when there's a certain paradigm or trend happening, and you step outside of that.

There's this sort of model that exists in Nashville that we think we have to abide by: You put out a record, and in two years you have to put out another one and have three or four singles. There are all these rules that I've just sort of thrown out the window.

Folks in Alabama seem like folks in Georgia to me. I feel like you can just about combine the two.

I'm not in control of my fate, and that's a good thing.

I kind of have my little OCD wood shed at my house where everything is just right when I go write.

I kept hearing all these rules: 'You can't say that in country music.' 'You can't use that kind of beat.' I became so frustrated. It may have slingshotted me, in a rebellious way, toward doing something different.

It wasn't in the cards to work out in football.