Hunter Metts is on the rise

Born in Franklin, just south of Nashville, to two musical parents - his mother from Texas, his dad from Mississippi - the pair had moved to the home of country music in pursuit of their craft. While it didn't pan out for them, taking up careers elsewhere, it did leave a house filled with music for their children to discover. Metts describes the medium as “Always around me, it was always very tangible and close.” With guitars and other musical items littered around the house, it allowed a natural musical discovery, no lessons, just self-teaching. He even still has his grandmother's small upright piano on which he learned to play.

“The ability to wake up as a kid, or in the summers off and you don't know what to do with yourself during the summer...when you're a kid, you can only go outside for so long,” he remembers, “and then I think it found me as a pastime, as opposed to, you know, maybe video games.”

Speaking to me from the studio where he recently finished recording his upcoming project, Metts is genial and soft-mannered: a southern gentleman with a modern earnestness who is currently relishing the chance to explore his past and explain his roots. Musically, it was gospel and bluegrass that surrounded Metts. While the level of boots-on-the-ground authenticity and theological musing would make up his musical DNA, it wasn’t until his teenage years that he found his own formative albums by the likes of Ben Howard, Fleet Foxes, The Paper Kites, and Bon Iver. Metts was moved by their honesty, which gave him the spark to try his hand.

He first trained as a software engineer, writing code by day while at night he filled hard drives with demos. But it wasn't until an unreleased track called "The Station" – a song about waiting in life, not just at a platform – that things clicked. "This is probably like 2020, or 2019, and it was about just being at a train station," he says. "But I feel like that was the first one that I felt like I was using some real lyrics that felt like a world. I really liked that one. Looking back, that was maybe one of the little North Stars at the beginning.

After walking away from software engineering, Metts found himself doing mould remediation work in Kentucky alongside his dad, whilst still driving back to Nashville to pursue his dream. “It made it tough because it felt like I couldn't be all in...I know it's cliche, but the analogy that if you let it, your Plan B becomes Plan A, and it genuinely started to feel like that. So it wasn't till I just committed to the body of work that's when I started to find who I was.”

Tapping into authenticity has become Metts' signature: "I don't think the first time you record a song or write a song, this authentic version of you is gonna spill out, or at least, that didn't happen for me,” he admits. “But I think now I genuinely feel like I'm at a point where, you know, if it's not me, I just don't write it down."

It took him a while to find his feet; he admits that when figuring out his musical fingerprint, he would try to chase what he thought was cool, or "making things through the lens of other people." It became a valuable learning moment during a pivotal time.

2021 was a hallmark year for Metts. Competing in the nineteenth season of American Idol, he made it into the final seven, where his public image was grounded in his rootsy, folk aesthetic. It was around this time that he released debut single "The River". While this part of his life wasn't a true reflection of him as a songwriter or person, it did bolster his musical dreams.

“I wish I hadn't done that," he says, referring to his earlier output. "And I think now I'm in this space where I'm writing things that are super true to me," he says. It was also a difficult step forward. It was a flow of writing that he had to adapt to, and he only feels that now he's hitting a stride and able to write his own story "And from this unique perspective that I have – everyone has their own – I'm just trying to let that be my North Star now."

The difference is night and day. Signing to BMG Publishing in 2023, amassing tens of millions of Spotify streams, and supporting James Bay on tour, the Hunter Metts of today is strengthened by a burgeoning success. His output follows this ever-increasing line graph of numbers and moments with a budding catalogue of heart-aching and earnest tunes rife with his personal life and outlook. His latest single, "Abilene", digs into Metts' grandfather's hometown with a gracefully picked acoustic backdrop. It follows his 2024 blissfully romantic breakout hit "Weathervane", released on the back of his debut EP Monochrome, which included the grief-laden "Somehow You’re Always There". Metts is becoming a formidably unignorable voice of the heart.

Citing the ethos of an unnamed director, “His thing is, don't blink...just create a body of work, don't blink, and then move on." Taking this to heart, it's how Metts has moved forward from his early steps. His past is his past, that's set in stone, but the future is his, and that version of Metts is who he's in control of. "It's always changing, but to try and find the most authentic version of yourself and then present that, that's what I've been trying to live by within the last year or so.”

Performing as a solo artist under his birth name wasn't always the plan. He experimented with various monikers and presentation concepts – including a band built around a honky-tonk upright piano and touches of pedal steel: bluegrass DNA with a modern twist. But his star led him back home. "I just kept going back to, you know, I think it's, I think I can succeed with just, you know, my name and being me,...Hunter Metts, that might not be this perfect artist name, but it's my name, and I just couldn't shake that."

Towards the end of our conversation, Metts mentions Tom Waits’ deep belief in the muse – a mystical force that draws creativity out of him. "He'll sit at his piano for hours, and he'll just talk to the muse,” Metts tells me. In a similar vein, he's discovered the shining beacon that he's now channeling. “I just got the pen on me at all times, you know?" He beams. "And if I see the North Star, I'm absolutely gonna follow that."