Sam Williams, the son of Hank Williams Jr., recently sat down for Apple Music’s Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly, where he discussed the inspiration behind his new “Titled Crown” music video, which details his upbringing, his relationship with his family, and ultimately serves as his public coming out.
The 24-year-old said he originally planned on showing references for his sexuality for his “Snow Angels” music video, but it never came to fruition.
But that changed with “Tilted Crown.”
He said on the episode:
“At first I kind of thought that, ‘I’m tackling something else with this.’ And I thought that maybe that’s for another project.
But again, 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 also talked about when he came out to his sister, Katie, for the first time, before she died in a tragic car crash in June of 2020:
“I told her a few months before then, in Alabama of all places, on the back of a four-wheeler. We were driving on a four-wheeler about to go eat somewhere, and I just felt called to… and I just felt like I had to, like I was hiding so much.
I think that she could see pain that I was in from hiding that and just had no idea. And I was like, ‘There’s been some situations that have made me uncomfortable and I just want you to know.’
And I could just see that there was such a pain there of not knowing.”
The video begins with Sam sitting in a theater, watching a play of his life, beginning with his legendary grandfather Hank Williams. The video also features a character that looks like his father, Hank Williams Jr.
Referring to the music video, he said that the reaction has been very positive, but wanted to make the point that the fatherhood references weren’t necessarily directed towards his dad:
“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.”
It’s definitely a powerful video and an authentic display of both who Williams is an artist, and as a person.
Well done.
You can check out the music video here:
