It’s been three years since reluctant country superstar Sam Hunt released his sophomore album Southside, and that album came out six years after his debut Montevallo. Hunt seemed like the most exciting, up-to-date thing in Nashville when he first arrived, and he never quite decided if he wanted to be a country-industry insider or a Nashville rebel. Ultimately, he was neither, and he fell off the map for long stretches of time. Country moved on, and we now have new country-industry insiders and Nashville rebels. Sam Hunt isn’t really part of the narrative anymore, but he’s still really good at making country music, on the rare occasions when he actually makes it. This is one of those occasions.
Hunt has released a couple of standalone singles since Southside, and he’s got another one today. It’s called “Walmart.” You could be forgiven for seeing that title and thinking the track might be sponcon. It’s not — or I don’t think it is, anyway. In the song’s narrative, Walmart itself is not a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just an everyday location where you might have a sudden, heartbreaking epiphany, which is the role that the superstore plays in many of our lives. I wonder if there had to be a lot of corporate negotiations for Hunt to use that title and the blue-handled shopping cart in the cover art.
“Walmart” is a ballad, built on piano and strings, about breakup and acceptance. Hunt has been thinking about a relationship that ended a long time ago, and then he runs into his ex’s mother and her daughter in those overlit Walmart aisles, and he comes to understand certain things about his life. Good song. Listen below.
