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Over a decade after Hunter Hayes broke out with his hit single “Wanted,” the country singer is embracing change.
As the final single before the unveiling of his forthcoming studio album, the country singer chose to release “Too Late” because it was written from a place of growth — and that was essential to his writing process.
“That was the biggest word last year, growth. I wanna grow, I wanna write about growing, and I want people to feel like it’s safe to grow,” the “Invisible” singer, 34, says. “This record found me growing and found me starving for growth and starving for expansion and learning and more experiences.”
Noah Tidmore
Reflecting on the song, Hayes says it’s a “love song to the process” — and a way to appreciate the natural unfolding of his life.
“My favorite lyrics are from the second verse because it just talks about nature. You know, you can cut through stone, even mountains change sometimes,” he says. “I just spent a week in Mount Zion looking up at the mountains and realizing that that’s however many bazillion years of change. That used to be sand and now it’s this giant mountain that you look upon with awe. I think life is just the same.”
Though he acknowledges that “trusting the process” feels like a “cliché” theme, it even rang true to the story of the night he recored it. At the time, he says, “I almost lost everything.”
“My software crashed and I had no idea how to get it back. I almost gave up on the song and I didn’t. At the time, I was really practicing one step at a time,” he says with a laugh. “So at 2:00 in the morning, I put the song back together one piece at a time and fell back in love with it by 4:00 a.m. and had a version that we listened to for six months, and that’s what made me fall in love with the song again.”
“Too Late” follows the release of “Wait,” “Fragile,” “Every Piece” and “Around the Sun.” His forthcoming album, Evergreen, is out on March 6.
Randy Shaffer
With the studio album, which marks his first in three years, the “I Want Crazy” singer’s hopes that it can “feel like a home that you’ve built after you’ve traveled the world.”
“It feels like home, but it also has stories from everywhere,” he says. “And I feel like that’s kind of me as a human at this point as well. I feel like I’ve lived so many versions of my own life before… I’m so grateful for that. So I wanted that feeling in this.”
After the release of Evergreen, Hayes will embark on the Evergreen Tour, which is a 22-city run across the country. Franklin Jonas and BLÜ EYES will support him on tour.
“Too Late” is out now.
