Songfacts®:

• Sam Hunt's Nashville night took a turn for the worse on November 21, 2019, when he got busted for DUI. Fast forward to August 19, 2021, and the "Body Like A Back Road" singer found himself facing the music as he was found guilty of the charge.
  
  The aftermath? Hunt's license was snatched for a year and he got a sentence of 11 months and 29 days in the slammer, though he only had to spend 48 hours behind bars.
  
  This song, aptly named "Locked Up," gives us a peek into his rocky road to redemption. The tune spills the beans on Sam's brushes with the law and his journey to finding love and forgiveness.
• Hunt spills his guts about the bad decisions that landed him in a jumpsuit instead of onstage. The first half is full of regret, singing about how his messing around nearly cost him the love of his life, his wife Hannah. But by the chorus, there's a change of tune. Sam's hat goes off to Hannah for sticking by him through thick and thin, even when thin meant jail time.
• Hunt co-wrote the song with Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne, Jerry Flowers and his producer Zach Crowell. The country star had the title in his phone. "I wanted to write a song called 'Locked Up,'" he said. "I had no idea about what it may be about, although I have had a few run-ins with the law in my lifetime."
  
  One day Crowell was playing him some tracks he'd built, and Hunt realized the title fit the vibe of the music his producer had whipped up. "I just started singing that chorus," he said. "I think I filled in, 30-40 percent of the lyric in one take."
• For the music video, Hunt took things to the clink – literally! Directed by Tim Mattia and shot at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee, it channels Johnny Cash's legendary 1968 Folsom Prison performance. Hunt, looking sharp in a suit and slicked-back hair, belts out the tune to the inmates. His wife, Hannah, walks in and out of the jailhouse with him, a powerful symbol of her unwavering support.
  
  "We found a really cool old prison in East Tennessee," Hunt explained, "and we had this idea originally to recreate the Johnny Cash Folsom Prison concert that he did back in the day and dressed up in all black, a suit, and I got a bunch of local guys to come out and dress up as inmates and had a really good time with it, sort of a period piece idea, I guess you could call it."