Hard To Forget - Radio Edit

"Hard to Forget" finds Sam Hunt singing about a heartbreak that's still haunting him. His lover has walked out and everywhere he goes, the singer is reminded of her. I saw your sister at work I saw your mama at church I'm pretty sure I saw your car at the mall Meanwhile, the ex in question has asked Hunt to leave her things out on the porch - she'll grab them by the end of the week. It's just jeans and a shirt But it's a whole lot of hurt I think I know why you've been dragging your feet Hunt cannot move on because he reckons the girl is "playin' hard to forget."

The song is built around honky-tonk singer Webb Pierce's 1953 12-week #1 hit "There Stands the Glass." The sample originated in the 2019 fall when "Hard to Forget" producer Luke Laird heard Pierce's tune on the Apple Music playlist Honky Tonk Essentials. He recalled to Rolling Stone: "I was like 'Man, what if I made a beat and sample that?'" Sitting in his car in a Nashville parking lot, Laird recorded a rough 13-second voice memo into his iPhone. It involved him humming the melody of Pierce's chorus as he beatboxed a crude rhythm. A few days later, during a songwriting session with Hunt and fellow songwriter Ashley Gorley, the singer asked Laird if he had any other beats to show him. Laird pulled out the rough voice memo that contained the "There Stands the Glass" sample, which intrigued Hunt. "He was just freaked out over it. Like, 'Gosh, play it again!'" The three then merged the sample with a different song that Hunt had been working on with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne titled "Playing Harder to Forget."

The song the three came up with starts out with a few lines of "There Stands the Glass" before a beat drops in, distorting the melody of Pierce's honky-tonk classic. The rest of "Hard to Forget" laces bits and pieces of the tune throughout Hunt's vocals, merging old-school country with a contemporary groove. "When I was making this beat," Laird told Rolling Stone, "part of me was like, 'If Kanye West came across a bin of old country records, what would he do?'"