Sam Hunt Channels Johnny Cash Alongside Wife Hannah in 'Locked Up' Video as He Nods to 2019 Arrest

Sam Hunt is channeling The Man in Black for his latest music video — and getting some help from his wife Hannah Lee Fowler.

Hunt, 39, released the video for his new single “Locked Up,” which nods to Johnny Cash’s famous Folsom Prison show in 1968 and costars Hannah, whom he married in 2017.

The song is a poignant reflection on the ways in which the country singer regrets the behaviors that led to his 2019 DUI arrest, and the ways he’s grateful to his wife for having stuck by his side through it all.

“The night I got locked up, everything went wrong/The night I got messed up, should’ve just stayed home,” he sings on the mid-tempo track. “Picked up my phone, what can I say?/I thought that you’d walk away, but you stood by your man like Tammy Wynette” (Wynette famously sings the 1968 classic “Stand By Your Man”).

Later in the song, he shouts out Hannah, 35, again, singing, “When you picked up my pieces and my only call/I knew you were in, baby, in for the long haul.”

The video was shot at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee, and features Hunt performing at the jail à la Cash with Hannah by his side in ‘60s-era looks.

Hunt was arrested in Nashville in November 2019 on charges of driving under the influence and possessing an open container. He was taken into the Metro jail, where he had a reported blood alcohol content level of 0.173 (well above the legal limit of 0.08).

He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges related to his arrest in August 2021, and served 48 hours at the DUI Educations Centers, an alternative facility. He also completed an alcohol safety course and lost his license for a year.

The “Make You Miss Me” singer and his wife also went through a rough patch; in February 2022, Hannah filed for divorce while pregnant with the couple’s first child.

A judge signed off on her request to dismiss the case that April, and she gave birth to daughter Lucy Louise that May. The pair’s son Lowry Lee was born in October 2023.

"[Fatherhood] has given me such a sense of purpose — at home and out on the road. A new appreciation for life in general," Hunt said on Audacy's Katie & Company podcast in September 2022. "I think I leveled up overnight, evolved 10 or 20 years overnight."

Meanwhile, the country star has been open about his arrest in past interviews, conceding that “it happened” in a 2020 interview with HITS Daily Double.

"People in my camp were talking about suppressing it, but why would I be afraid to talk about it? If it happens, it's true,” he said. “I was raised and taught to respect [alcohol]. Moderation is important. I've never wanted to glorify it. It's a cheap trick in country music, and I've always wanted to avoid that. I don't like using [drinking] as a party song; for me, that wouldn't be honest. I've never been the guy who shotguns a beer. I know people who partake that way, and I wouldn't want to shake my finger or look down on them."

Hunt will perform “Locked Up” for the first time at the 2024 CMT Music Awards on April 7.