When Sam Barber wrote his first song, he had no idea how far it would take him. Just 16 at the time, the country singer/songwriter penned “Straight and Narrow,” an aching, clear-eyed plea for resilience that revealed his old soul — and proved he’s a star on the rise.
“Straight and Narrow,” which appeared on Barber’s 2023 EP, Million Eyes, was the now 21-year-old’s first brush with viral success, racking up streams and drawing in fans who were intrigued by the young guitar slinger who seemed to appear out of nowhere. The song would eventually land on Billboard charts — in both rock and country — and helped Barber earn a Grand Ole Opry debut and a partnership with Atlantic Records.
Barber’s latest milestone is his debut album, Restless Mind, which arrived Nov. 1. The double LP shows the true breadth of his artistry, which is grounded in raw, narrative songwriting — like that of two of Barber’s musical idols, Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers — and gritty, spare production that puts the listeners’ focus squarely on Barber’s emotive, bellowing voice.
Barber says he originally planned to record around a dozen songs for the LP, but instead, Restless Mind comprises a whopping 28 tracks. While that volume was intentional, Barber wasn’t trying to keep up with the double-album trend country music has seen as of late — he simply wanted to please his fans.
Though he just began sharing his music in 2021, Barber’s rapidly growing fan base — who first loved him for his covers on TikTok — continuously asked for more music. He felt his listeners deserved as much from him as he could muster for his debut album, and as he tells GRAMMY.com, “I want them to know I am working very hard.”
Barber describes himself as a prolific writer and that it’s his love for songwriting, specifically, that motivates him. Restless Mind is “an accumulation of my entire music career up to this point,” Barber says, adding that some material comes from his teen songwriting years while other songs are just months old.
At the helm of Restless Mind was producer Eddie Spear, whose creative partnership with Barber began in 2022 after Spear DMed the singer. As one of Zach Bryan’s frequent collaborators, Spear’s desire to work with Barber wasn’t just “surreal” for the budding star, but also validated the work he’d created up to that point. Spear’s involvement also helped Barber see his music in a new light.
“Eddie made my songs something that I never could have imagined, just putting extra pieces,” Barber says. “And the people I met in the room… It opened my mind to a completely different world of music that I didn’t even know was a thing.”
One such world is pop. Barber and GRAMMY-winning songwriter Amy Allen, whose extensive list of credits includes cuts for pop stars like Harry Styles and Sabrina Carpenter, met at a co-write and found unexpected creative common ground. Though he initially felt skeptical that they could bridge the gap between their different styles, Barber left their session (which spawned Restless Mind‘s “Thought of You,” as well as a few other unreleased songs) with an expanded sense of what his music could be.
