Gearing up to drop his debut album A ROCK next Friday (9/4), Big Loud Records’ heavy-hitter HARDY accelerates into release week with brand-new track “TRUCK,” available at all digital retailers and streaming platforms now.

Written by HARDY, Ben Johnson and Hunter Phelps, produced by Joey Moi with co-production by Derek Wells, “TRUCK” is a twisty take on the classic idiom about “judging a book by its cover,” incorporating and reinvigorating one of Country music’s most-written tropes – the classic good ol’ boy and his pickup truck – and flipping it on its head: “You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a Country boy by his truck.”  

“Hunter Phelps had the idea; he just had the thought ‘you can tell a lot about a Country boy by the truck he drives.’ We wanted to do it differently than it’s been done before and write the song about the character of the truck, things that you can know just by looking,” HARDY shares. “In the wintertime, if you live in a rural area and you’re riding around roads, you’re going to eventually see a buck in the back of somebody’s truck, and you know that guy’s a deer hunter and he is jacked that he just got a buck – you automatically know a little bit about that guy. If you see a truck that’s got dents all over the side, you can probably guess that that guy’s pretty fearless and he’s not afraid to put his truck through some shit. In small towns you’ll see these days a hashtag or a little phrase in remembrance of someone who’s passed away on the back window or bumper – if you see that, you know that if this person went and got a sticker of this, they were close to somebody that they lost. It’s being able to somewhat define somebody just by looking at the truck they drive.”

Surprising fans, HARDY gave yet another preview of his much-anticipated debut project, continuing his HARDY 360 LIVE series with “SO CLOSE” featuring label mate and gravel-voiced powerhouse Ashland Craft. Watch their grungy, hard-rocking duet performed live here.

Charging on, A ROCK’s launch day is in sight with high praise already piling up – The New York Times called last week’s “BOYFRIEND” “a sharply written song about taking things to the next level…This is how sensitive Country bros put a ring on it,” while Billboard praised fan favorite “GIVE HEAVEN SOME HELL” as it “strikes all the right notes.” Rolling Stone sees the full collection as a showcase of HARDY’s “knack for irreverent storytelling,” “celebrating the value of a good story” and notes “HARDY’s gift: synthesizing biography with imagination to create real storytelling.”

 

 

ABOUT HARDY:
With every new release, Big Loud Records' HARDY continues to "embody that classic Country spirit while pushing the boundaries of modern radio music" (American Songwriter). His Top 20 single “ONE BEER” feat. Lauren Alaina & Devin Dawson is accelerating at Country radio now, previewing his debut album, A ROCK (9/4), alongside fan favorite “BOOTS,” "GIVE HEAVEN SOME HELL," “BOYFRIEND” and newest release “TRUCK.” The collection follows 2019’s countrified mixtape HiXTAPE VOL. 1 — praised by Billboard as “one of the most ambitious projects of the year” — and career-launching EPs THIS OLE BOY and WHERE TO FIND ME. As the newly-minted 2020 AIMP Songwriter of the Year, a MusicRow 2020 Next Big Thing artist, CMA Triple Play award recipient and Vevo DSCVR artist, the pride of Philadelphia, MS has earned his reputation as "Nashville's Most Clever New Redneck Songwriter" (Rolling Stone) with FIVE #1 singles as a writer since 2018: Morgan Wallen’s 2X PLATINUM “Up Down," FGL’s 2X PLATINUM “Simple,” Chris Lane’s PLATINUM “I Don’t Know About You,” Blake Shelton’s 3X PLATINUM “God’s Country," and LOCASH's "One Big Country Song." The ACM nominee for Songwriter of the Year and Song of the Year (“God’s Country”) has shared the stage with FGL, Chris Lane, Thomas Rhett, Cole Swindell and Morgan Wallen.