Musician Sam Williams has put his struggles with sexuality into song with his new tune My Tilted Crown.
The singer is the grandson of country legend Hank Williams, while his father Hank Williams Jnr has also enjoyed a long and successful career. His older brother Shelton Williams performs as Hank Williams III and has put out a dozen albums, and most of his relatives are in the music business. He hails from one giant musical dynasty.
In an interview with Apple Music’s Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly Williams spoke about his upbringing, his family, and his public coming out statement via his new video.
Williams said he had originally hoped to share the news about his sexuality in a previous video for the song Snow Angels, but it didn’t come about. When it came time to make the video for his new song, he says he still felt he was not being visible.
“I felt like I was promoting invisibility, like I wasn’t being visible and wasn’t being myself. And I just thought it was the perfect opportunity to just show who I was.
“I identify as gay, and I’ve never said that to anybody else. I mean, people at my label know and people in my personal life know, but this is the first time that I’ve ever been, besides a show or two, that I’ve ever been this public about it.
“And it is scary, but it feels good.” Williams said.
While the father character in the video looks a lot like Sam Williams’ famous father, he says the character does not completely represent his own parent. He says the response to his video has been overwhelmingly positive.
“It’s been extremely positive, and I’ve liked that people can see that, in that video there’s an older man character that puts the cowboy hat on the little boy, takes his cape off and is kind of aggressive in some of these scenes, and that’s not necessarily playing my dad, that’s playing society as a whole.
“And yeah, that’s supposed to portray society as a whole and pointing young kids in direction of like, ‘This is what girly girls do. You wear this pink bow, and you go to Sunday service.’ Or like with little boys, ‘You go hunting.’
“I appreciated that lots of people were making that connection that that older man character is really supposed to symbolize society as a whole and fitting in one box. ‘This is what you’re supposed to be doing, son.’
“The amount of children that hear that and don’t really get to express and be themselves. And my relationship with my dad wasn’t really like that at all. He didn’t push me to be in music. He pushed me go to hunting, I do have to give him that. He did push me to go hunting.”
Williams’ album Glasshouse Children came out in 2021 and featured collaborations with Keith Urban and Dolly Parton. Alongside his album he’s also released a couple of new singles that are not featured on his record.
OIP Staff
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