Hunter Hayes is embracing a season of growth.
The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, 33, shared how he’s looking ahead to his next chapter while taking a “therapeutic” deep dive into his past. Hayes said while speaking with iHeartCountry on the red carpet at the 2024 People’s Choice Country Awards that in the process of working on his forthcoming record, he “secretly” reimagined a few previously-released songs.
It started “just as an exercise,” Hayes said. “It was really beautiful for me, personally, and I felt like I wanted to share it. And so, I’m rereleasing some reimagined songs from my past in kind of a — in a way, to show how they’ve grown with me.”
Hayes recently released the first of three reimagined tracks on his upcoming EP, Lost & Found. “In A Song” arrived on September 20, and an acoustic version will make its debut on Friday (October 4). The full collection will be available on November 15. Hayes said the first Lost & Found rerecording is “like my theme song. I feel like that is my life story. I called it Lost & Found, especially because a lot of my stuff came out earlier, before streaming, (so) it’s nice for some of these songs to kind of have a second life.” Hayes previously included “In A Song” on his 17-track Hunter Hayes (Encore) album more than a decade ago. He quickly became known for songs like “Wanted,” “I Want Crazy,” “Somebody’s Heartbreak,” “Still Fallin” and more in the early years of his career.
“The process is trippy,” he said of revisiting his old music and selecting songs to rerecord. “It feels like therapy because it’s like you’re having a conversation with your younger self. And that’s what this whole process has been. And you hear lyrics you wrote as your younger self and it’s really therapeutic. I mean, it’s really deep for me to get to do this.” His advice to that younger version of himself? “Chill the f*** out. It’s gonna be fine. Just chill out and enjoy. Try to just slow down and enjoy more of it.
“To me, the songs all feel really brand new,” Hayes added later. “They sound familiar, I think, because musically they are very familiar. But I just experimented so much with these songs. These songs are like of like a testing ground for a lot of new processes for me, and ways to work and new sounds, new instruments. It was a really fun exercise to do these songs.”
Hayes’ most recent full-length project is Red Sky (Continued), an expanded edition of his 2023 album with “Missing You,” “Could’ve Been You,” “Friend,” “Normal” and more. Since then, he’s debuted “Song About You,” “Villain” and other singles. Now, Hayes is looking ahead to Lost & Found’s arrival on November 15 and immersing himself in his next project, Evergreen, with a focus on growth. The release date has not been publicly confirmed as of publication time.
“Evergreen is my life right now. I’m living and breathing it, and I cannot wait to share it,” he told iHeartCountry. “It’s a very different style of working for me. And it’ll make more sense when it gets released and we’ll talk about it, but that’s my life. And I’m really excited for people to hear it.”