During a new conversation with The New York Times, Josh Osborne and Shane McAnally reflect on the unique process behind Sam Hunt's game-changing hit, ‘Take Your Time’.

While chatting to The New York Times alongside another country songwriting titan, Brandy Clark, Osborne and McAnally reveal that, when Hunt first threw out the idea to have spoken-word verses, an “established older writer” laughed at the suggestion.

‘Take Your Time’, released in 2014, was groundbreaking in its composition, sounding unlike anything else we'd heard in country music at the time. Hunt ripped up the genre's rule-book, incorporating Hip-Hop elements, and in doing so, positioning himself shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow trailblazers of that era, like Florida Georgia Line.

As part of the new songwriting-focussed video series, Osborne recalls how the ‘Body Like a Back Road’ crooner's atypical style was initially scoffed at by a more experienced writer. Making this all the more heartbreaking for Hunt, as Osborne and McAnally explain, was the fact that it was someone the then-up-and-comer really admired.

Osborne begins by underlining the crucial role of songwriters in Nashville, particularly when working with a relatively new artist, “So much of what what we do as songwriters in Nashville, especially when we work with artists, is we're trying to help them find the best version...of what they want to do, or a unique version”.

He goes on to detail writing with Hunt, “This is a perfect example of what we were talking about earlier about trusting someone else in the room. Sam and I had a co-write set up with an established older writer that had some hits. We were both very much in awe of this person, admired this person, really excited to be in the room with them. So we came in and Sam said, ‘I have this idea for a song’. He didn't really have the title, but he said, ‘I think it would be really interesting in this day and age, if you had a song where in the verses, I was literally talking to the girl’”.

He expands, “[Hunt] just had, like, a sketch of it. He did not have a chorus, and he said, ‘I just think it would sound so different and so cool’. And the older writer started laughing, and he said, ‘I don't think anybody's gonna want to hear that on the radio, Sam’, and he left the room to get some coffee. And the second he walked out of the room, I said, ‘Don't tell that to anybody else. We're going to play that for Shane’”.

Osborne stresses that he knew McAnally would be more open-minded, with McAnally adding, “I feel almost paternal to Sam and thinking about that kid, because, you know, he was new to writing. He had a true reverence for songwriters. He still does. And so the idea that he would have sat down with this writer that he had this reverence for and that they would have laughed...it breaks my heart”.

Osborne quips, “He got the last laugh”, with ‘Take Your Time’ remaining one of the most popular - and most influential - songs in the contemporary country music canon, amassing over 300 million streams at the time of writing on Spotify alone.

Osborne pays homage to Hunt, “Sam has a real country voice. Sam's from Georgia. I mean, Sam's a legit country boy, but he's from close to Atlanta. He's like, ‘I also grew up on Hip-Hop and R&B...That music's just as much part of who I am as country’”.

He concludes, “We were into that. We were like, ‘Let's try that’. And so that helped us being there, and it's why we still work with Sam now, like, he hopefully feels like he can be creative with us. He can open up to us and throw things out there, and we're not gonna laugh at him, and we're not gonna leave the room and be like, ‘Yeah, well, I don't know about that, Sam’...Sometimes too, so much of co-writing is trust, and you have to trust the instincts of this other person”.

Now, it's not unheard of to hear Hip-Hop and trap textures mixed into country music, but there's certainly an argument that, without Hunt taking a risk with ‘Take Your Time’, the Nashville soil wouldn't have been quite as fertile for subsequent genre-bending chart-toppers, such as Morgan Wallen, Thomas Rhett and Post Malone. Hunt has gone relatively quiet in recent years, but his impact on the country landscape is undeniable, and we're just thankful that Music City still has songwriters like Osborne, McAnally and Clark who are receptive and kind enough to allow each new wave of artists to express themselves with freedom.

For more on Sam Hunt, see below: