Hunter Hayes is an American singer-songwriter who’s credited with bringing a whole new audience to the country music scene. But what was his first song?
Hunter Hayes released multiple independent studio albums whilst a child, the first of which, ‘Through My Eyes’, was released in 2000 when he was just nine years old. His debut single ‘Storm Warning’, however, was released with Atlantic Records on May 16, 2011.
Read on to learn more about Hunter Hayes’ early career, his debut album, and his new music.
Child Prodigy
Born in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana on September 9, 1991, it wasn’t long before Hunter Hayes’ musical talents presented themselves.
He began to practice his music after he was given a toy accordion by his grandmother aged two, and the rest was history.
As a 7-year-old child performer, Hunter performed at a White House lawn party for President Bill Clinton and had already made numerous TV appearances.
He released several albums between 2000 and 2008 with local labels before moving to Nashville, Tennessee to continue his career in 2008.
‘Storm Warning’
‘Storm Warning’ was the debut single from Hunter’s self-titled debut album. The song was released on May 16, 2011, on radio, whilst the album wasn’t released until October of that year.
Unsurprisingly, given his wide-ranging musical talents, Hunter played every instrument on the album and was involved in the writing process of every song, either solely or in a co-writing capacity.
Speaking about the process behind the development of the debut single, Hunter explained that he wrote the song with a couple of other writers. One of the writers, Mike Busbee, suggested the idea of a song called ‘Storm Warning’, and Hunter recalls that he “went from weather to love in a heartbeat”.
For Hunter at the time, he was able to relate to the idea of a storm warning romantically: “As a 19-year-old, I figured out that it made me feel like the girl I was interested in at the time was not bad news, but not necessarily good for me”.
In an interview with GQ Magazine in 2020, Hunter explained that the song was written in the wake of a breakup that occurred when he moved to Nashville. The on-again-off-again nature of their relationship eventually caused it to dissolve, but he admits “I should have known better”.
The song was written collectively along that vein and features the lyric, “have you ever noticed every hurricane gets its name from a girl like this”. It was described as being “light and airy, upbeat and catchy, but easy for anyone to relate to”.
In terms of the song’s commercial reception, the song debuted on the Billboard Top 100 chart at number 98 and the single has been certified Gold by the RIAA in recognition of its sales.
Listen to the singer’s debut single ‘Storm Warning’ in the YouTube video below.
A New Direction
After the release of his third studio album in 2015, Hayes took a break from music, even canceling an album due to shifting priorities. His return to music began officially in 2019, with the release of a single, titled ‘Heartbreak’, and the subsequent release of his fourth studio album ‘Wild Blue Part 1’.
The album is the first of three parts and Hayes has presented it as his first opportunity to write whatever he wanted, without pressure. Speaking of his hopes for his future writing, Hunter said of his music, “I think it’s been filtered and for the first time in ten years I have removed a lot of those filters”.
For someone who’s time in the spotlight has spanned the majority of his life, it’s not surprising that Hunter’s music is evolving.