Hunter Hayes Discusses His Latest Release ‘Too Late’

Known for his emotional storytelling and pop-country sounds, Hunter Hayes’s newest track, "Too Late," highlights the realization that sometimes clarity comes after the moment passes.   

In an interview with PEOPLE, Hayes admitted that “Too Late” was written about growth. “That was the biggest word last year, growth. I wanna grow, I wanna write about growing, and I want people to feel like it's safe to grow," he said. “This record found me growing and found me starving for growth and starving for expansion and learning and more experiences.”  

The 34-year-old singer-songwriter also revealed that the song’s second verse was his favorite: “My favorite lyrics are from the second verse because it just talks about nature. You know, ‘You can cut through stone, even mountains change sometimes.’ I just spent a week in Mount Zion looking up at the mountains and realizing that that's however many bazillion years of change. That used to be sand and now it's this giant mountain that you look upon with awe. I think life is just the same.”  

Hayes also revealed that the night he recorded the track, he “almost lost everything.” He said, “My software crashed and I had no idea how to get it back. I almost gave up on the song and I didn't. At the time, I was really practicing one step at a time.”  

He continued, “So at 2:00 in the morning, I put the song back together one piece at a time and fell back in love with it by 4:00 a.m. and had a version that we listened to for six months, and that's what made me fall in love with the song again.”  

“Too Late” is the final single for his upcoming studio album, Evergreen, out on March 6. Listen below.