Sam Hunt faced an unexpected “rhyming straitjacket” when writing “Outskirts”

Courtesy of MCA Nashville

With “Outskirts” climbing up the country charts, Sam Hunt‘s taking fans into the songwriting session of his latest single.

As Sam recalls, though he had the song idea for a while, it wasn’t until he buckled down to ready new music that it finally was written and ready for recording.

“I have these songs in pieces that exist either in my head or my phone or computer. And that was one that has been around for a while. But I told myself several months ago that come hell or high water, I’m putting out music,” recounts Sam. “So I found that idea and thought, you know, with some work, maybe this can be something. And I went in and polished it up and wrote some verses.”

However, Sam and Josh Osborne — both of whom co-wrote the track with Jerry Flowers and Zach Crowell — faced an unexpected conundrum. As Sam was chatting on the phone with Josh after church, he realized they had unintentionally written themselves into a “rhyming straightjacket” — a term that Bob Regan, one of Sam’s first co-writers, coined.

“I was missing one line,” Sam recalls. “And that’s what we had done on this song. We needed one line, the rhyme was so unique that we could not find a rhyme.”

If you’re curious about the word Sam struggled to rhyme with, it was the song title and word “outskirts.” Fortunately, he did eventually rhyme it with “house first” in the chorus.

Sam’s currently out on his headlining Summer On The Outskirts Tour with openers Brett Young and Lily Rose. For the full tour schedule, visit his website.