Hunter Phelps has developed a fierce career as a songwriter in Nashville, with songs cut by Chris Lane, Florida Georgia Line and HARDY. Here, we talk to Hunter about this success and his own burgeoning solo artist career.
Hey, how are you doing today?
Great thanks.
You’ve had such mammoth success over the past year. With all the tracks that you’ve released, do you get that gut feeling when you release each one that it’s something special?
I mean I have that feeling a lot, but most of the time when I listen back to the song, I hear something that we might have missed. I mean whenever you have that feeling, you listen back to the song, and you’re like ‘wow, this is exactly what we thought it was gonna be’. That’s a really cool thing.
Obviously your song ‘Whiskey Mode’ just came out. How has it felt being your own artist and stepping out and pursuing your own artistry, alongside your songwriting?
I’ve been putting songs out for a while. I was really excited about ‘Whiskey Mode’ because it’s just such a unique idea. I feel like we wrote it as good as we could have written it. Chris made it sound better than anything that I’ve ever put out. The production is perfect on it to me – it was different. I couldn’t wait to get ‘Whiskey Mode’ out because I knew that it was special and that people were gonna like it. I listened to that song an embarrassing amount of times before I put it out.
That’s the way it should be though – you should be a fan of the songs you’re putting out. In terms of putting out songs, how do you decide to keep certain songs for your own?
I have a vision for my artistry and if it’s my idea, then I will lock it down before it gets pitched – Throwin Parties never got pitched. With ‘Whiskey Mode,’ Brent Anderson had the idea and he kind of had the groove – he’s one of the best writers in Nashville.
His cut list is insane when you look through it.
I really wanted that song to have a shot and get pitched around town. I wouldn’t have been upset if someone had cut it.
At the end of the day good songs are good songs and you want it to be heard no matter what form that takes.
It didn’t take me long to lock it down once it had made its’ rounds around town and nobody had tried to hold it or anything like that. I took it straight to the studio.
Obviously you moved from Florida to Nashville to develop your career. What has being in town given to your songwriting and artistry?
I feel like it hasn’t changed too much. As far as getting closer to what I want out of a song, I get closer to that. I’m definitely better at songs – without a doubt. I don’t think that the language has changed – just the structure I guess and just meeting people with different skill sets.
Are there certain people that you gravitate towards, for instance on the more anthemic sounds like ‘Cold Beer’ but also the heartfelt tracks? Do you find that there are certain people that you’re better at writing certain songs with?
I mean, it’s more on a country scale.I have guys that I lean on for country, or ideas and things that will need a more genuine country language. Now and then you have ideas that you think could lean in a different direction or something that you can write with somebody who is maybe better at a more pop-leaning melody. There’s writers that are really good at pop melodies and pop tracks.
I really want to talk to you about ‘Give Heaven Some Hell,’ which has got to be one of the tracks of last year. It was such a big song, what was the story behind that one?
So, HARDY’s record has a song called ‘TRUCK’ on it, ‘best friend that he can barely tell’ is what we said at the end of the verse – the original line was ‘memories about his friend, and now he’s given heaven some hell,’ someone threw that out and we heard that and thought ‘man, I think that’s a great idea.’ The line didn’t work in the song, but we saved the idea because we had a write coming up in two weeks with Ashley Gorley. We had a little mini retreat so the first song that we wrote on that retreat was ‘Give Heaven Some Hell.’ We wrote that song so quickly.
You’ve had your first number one recently too with ‘I Don’t Know About You’ – that must have been such a big moment to have that first number one?
Oh, it was crazy. We wrote that song – we started it at Ashley’s house and then we finished it at Hardy’s house. Jameson and Hardy – we came up together and then Ashley is my publisher, so we had the crew. We wrote the song and we listened back to it and we’re like ‘heck yeah, this is good’. When we turned it in, everybody was freaking out and then three artists were trying to hold it at the same time. Chris was going into the studio and he’s like ‘I’ve got this now.’
Are there many songs that have really surprised you when they’ve gone into the studio and you hadn’t thought they’d be as big as they were – the producer takes the artist in a different route?
It happens. I don’t know, it just depends. There’s definitely been times where I heard the cut and thought I prefer the original version or whatever, but it’s more a case of ‘demo-itis’ thing – the demo that I did of it, but it’s more getting used to how it sounds.
Nashville is on a completely different level for demos – making it sound so polished. In terms of your own artist route, you’ve got ‘Whiskey Mode’ and then are you just going to see what happens with that. Have you got more songs in the pipeline?
By the end of this month, we’re gonna go in and start working on another one. Chris has got a studio and we go in there and kind of map the song out how we want it and start throwing stuff at the wall. We see what sticks and it’s case of me and him figuring it out.
It’s so much more organic.
Yeah, it definitely takes longer the way we’re doing it, but it’s you. I just feel like you can get some different stuff out of it.
Thank you so much for your time today – we’re excited to hear new music!
