Sinning with You

Album: Southside (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Sinning with You" is a sultry R&B ballad where Sam Hunt explores the moral complications of having a sexual relationship with the girl he loves.

    I never felt like I was sinning with you.
    I always felt like I could talk to God in the morning


    For the teenage Sam Hunt, such intimacy didn't feel at odds with his Christian faith, though other folks might have claimed otherwise.
  • Sam Hunt married Hannah Lee Fowler on April 15, 2017. The pair had been dating on-and-off since 2008, and Fowler was the main inspiration behind his debut album Montevallo. "Sinning With You" starts off with Hunt singing about a smalltown girl who was "raised in the first pew." When she starts dating a guy with a checkered past, her "spotless record was probably in jeopardy." It is likely that Hunt had his wife in mind when he wrote this introspective reflection; the clue being that raised in the smalltown of Montevallo, Alabama, Hannah Lee is the daughter of a pastor.
  • Written by Hunt with Paul DiGiovanni, Josh Osborne and Emily Weisband, the song is a rumination of faith and values through the lens of love. "It's a metaphor for a small-town guy who was raised with traditional values, a lot of those rooted in church and faith," Hunt explained to Rolling Stone. "Most of the value systems that I grew up around are rooted in religion and church.

    "You start to read books and talk to people who grew up in different backgrounds, and you try to collect that knowledge and find some meaning, some truth," the singer continued. "It speaks to the broader pursuit of truth and understanding, in terms of how you are supposed to live your life."
  • Released on January 2, 2020, "Sinning With You" followed in the footsteps of "Kinfolks," which Sam Hunt dropped on October 11, 2019. The singer explained the pair of tracks represent two sides of the same coin about growing up in his Georgia hometown.

    "'Kinfolks' talks about my hometown and growing up in the South in a lighthearted way," Hunt said. "And 'Sinning with You'...it's kind of a commentary on growing up in the South, some of the heavier side of that journey, the crossroads you kind of come to as you're growing up and trying to figure out what some of the traditions that you grew up in [mean], and what faith really means to you and just where the truth lies."

    "I guess just searching for truth as a young person growing up in a crazy world," he added. "But it still reflects that. It still goes back to my hometown... the theme in that song."
  • Sam Hunt first debuted the song on September 19, 2019 during his Bud Light House Party show in Canada.
  • The plan was to drop "Sinning With You" on November 22, 2019. However, the day before, Hunt got himself arrested in Nashville for driving under the influence. The track's release was bumped until 2020.

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