Southside (Sam Hunt album)

Following the success of Hunt's debut album Montevallo, released in 2014,[7] Hunt sporadically released several singles[8][9] while delaying his second studio album.[10][11] In the years between, he released the massive hit "Body Like a Back Road",[12] "Downtown's Dead",[13] as well as the track "Drinkin' Too Much".[14] Hunt gave little details on when his second album would be released until the release of "Kinfolks" in October 2019,[15] when he stated the full album would be released in 2020 and followed it up with the release of the track "Sinning with You" in January 2020.[16] In February 2020, Hunt finally revealed the album title Southside as well as an April 2020 release date.[4] The track "Hard to Forget" was soon released to coincide with the beginning of pre-orders,[17] and was later announced to be the next single.[18]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	72/100[19]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[20]
Robert Christgau	A−[21]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[22]
Pitchfork	7.5/10[23]
Rolling Stone	[24]
Slant Magazine	[25]
Tom Hull	B+ ()[26]

Southside was met with generally positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album holds an average score of 72 based on six reviews.[19]

Writing for Rolling Stone, Jon Freeman highlighted the "thread of sensitivity" in Southside and opined that the album made Hunt "a crossover star."[24] Chris DeVille of Stereogum positively compared the album to Montevallo, praising how the former contains "ever more adventurous packaging and a more seasoned perspective".[27] In concurrence, Pitchfork's Natalie Weiner stated that the album "shows a clarity of purpose that his debut lacked" while also praising Hunt's "enviably organic" way of threading "the country/hip-hop needle".[23] In a mixed review, Seth Wilson of Slant Magazine took note of the album's "ingratiating charm" but criticized its lyrical content.[25] Robert Christgau awarded the album an A− grade in his online subscription letter praising in particular Hunt's "way with words" prevailing throughout the record, citing the chorus of 'Body Like a Back Road' as an example of his words cherishing "the American vernacular that imbues great pop songwriting from Irving Berlin to Jay-Z in a Nashville dialect that recalls John Prine".[28]

Southside debuted at number five on the US Billboard 200, opening with 46,000 album-equivalent units, including 18,000 pure album sales. It earned the third-largest streaming week for a country album, and is Hunt's second US top-10 album.[34]

• Gideon Boley – pedal steel guitar
• Tim Braisted – bass guitar, background vocals
• Josh Burkett – electric guitar
• Bryce Cain – acoustic guitar, keyboards, programming
• Tyrone Carreker – electric guitar, background vocals
• Jamil Chammas – electric guitar
• Dave Cohen – keyboards
• Zach Crowell – bass guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, programming, background vocals
• Ian Fitchuk – keyboards, organ
• Jeneé Fleenor – fiddle
• Jerry Flowers – background vocals
• Charlie Handsome – acoustic guitar, programming
• Sam Hunt – acoustic guitar, lead vocals
• Evan Hutchings – drums
• Scott Johnson – rap
• Chris LaCorte – banjo, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboards
• Luke Laird – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, programming
• Devin Malone – cello, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, pedal steel guitar
• Josh Matheny – dobro, acoustic guitar
• Anthony Olympia – dobro
• Josh Osborne – acoustic guitar, background vocals
• Justin Ostrander – electric guitar
• Russ Pahl – dobro, pedal steel guitar
• Sol Philcox-Littlefield – electric guitar
• Joshua Sales – drums
• Scotty Sanders – dobro, pedal steel guitar
• Jimmie Lee Sloas – bass guitar
• Bryan Sutton – acoustic guitar
• Russell Terrell – background vocals
• Ilya Toshinsky – banjo, dobro, acoustic guitar, electric guitar
• Derek Wells – electric guitar
• Nir Z. – drums