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Hunter Hayes anchored his new EP with a reimagined rendition of one of the earliest hits of his career.
The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist recently debuted Lost & Found. The 3-track EP offers a fresh spin on a few of Hayes’ previously-released songs, including “In A Song,” “Still Fallin’” and “Somebody’s Heartbreak.” The collection arrives as Hayes prepares for his next chapter of music with a focus on growth and change.
Hayes said “Somebody’s Heartbreak” was the “anchor” of Lost & Found, having spend the most time with it and playing the hopeful anthem at nearly every show since its original debut in 2011. Though the idea to rerecord his music previously arose while meeting with fans at VIP events on tour, Hayes opted to hold off because he “didn’t really have my ‘why’ together.” Eventually, the “why” came into focus as Hayes considered things that remain a constant, core structure amid evolution and progress over time. Three songs stood out to him the most, and Hayes said “Somebody’s Heartbreak” has “evolved a lot” over the years.
“‘Somebody's Heartbreak’ is very much about the willingness to…accept the potential of getting your heart broken in the process of finding something that won't hurt, but rather a safe place to be,” Hayes said in a recent interview with iHeartCountry. “‘Somebody's Heartbreak’ is like, ‘I’m willing to take that chance.’ And I feel like that's part of the positive theme that is Evergreen, finding something, realizing all the dreams you've had and really manifesting the things you want for yourself and creating more of what you want in the world.”
“In A Song” quickly made its way onto the EP, and “Still Fallin’” completed the track list (with a newly-premiered music video filmed in Downtown Nashville, Tennessee). Hayes explained that rather than evoking feelings of nostalgia or reflecting back to a precious chapter, his goal with the Lost & Found series was to remake each of the songs “so that they can come with me in the future. …I want them to be a part of the next chapter,” he told iHeartCountry. “I want these songs to be part of the next season, which was the whole reason for doing this.”
Hayes previously said on the red carpet at the 2024 People’s Choice Country Awards that reimagining some of his music began “just as an exercise. 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.” He said it was a “trippy” process that felt “like therapy because it’s like you’re having a conversation with your younger self.”
Hayes said Lost & Found serves as a “preview” to Evergreen, his next project that has “been about creating room to breathe and space, and it's very much a manifestation of what you want more of in life. …Over the course of making this record, I decided early on that it was going to be a record about creating more of what you want in the world and believing that it's possible, believing in visualization and dreams and just all of those things rather than reacting to maybe what's around you. It's about focusing on the future, focusing on what you want, focusing on what you need. And I've actually seen evidence in my personal life of it actually happening. So, I feel like I've done the exercises alongside the concept of it. …But it's a living, breathing project, so I'm just working with it every day.”
It wasn’t clear as of publication time when Hayes might begin to release music from his Evergreen chapter, but it’s a project that the singer-songwriter remains fully immersed in, he said.
“Evergreen is my life right now. I’m living and breathing it, and I cannot wait to share it,” he told iHeartCountry at the People’s Choice Country Awards. “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.”