Country singer/songwriter, guitarist, and pianist Sam Hunt was born and raised in rural Cedartown, Georgia, where he was a gifted athlete and had a fine career as a college quarterback at both Middle Tennessee State University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Although he was good enough to be signed as a free agent for a time with the Kansas City Chiefs, Hunt was drawn increasingly to music. He had grown up on, and loved, 1990s country, and after hearing all manner of rap, R&B, and other urban pop styles in college locker rooms, he developed a singing and songwriting style that gently blended all of this, and he headed off to Nashville, ground zero for hopeful country songwriters, to begin his career.