Hank Williams’s songwriter grandson Sam Williams opens up about his sexuality

Sam Williams has said that publicly embracing his sexual identity “is scary but feels good” in a forthcoming interview.

Appearing on Apple Music’s Proud Radio this Sunday (30 October), the grandson of country music legend Hank Williams told host Hunter Kelly he is gay – marking the first time he’s ever “been this public about it”.

Williams, who uses the pronouns “he/him”, said: “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,” he added.

Williams, who is the son of recording artist Hank Williams Jr, also explained why he had decided to open up about his personal life on a public platform.

The Tennessee native said that, growing up, he had spent a lot of time trying to hide his sexuality and “fit in” with other children.

He added it would have been “impactful” for him, when he was younger, to have seen “somebody like myself doing an interview like this”.

“So I think at the end of the day, that’s one of the most important reasons why I’m being so open,” the “Title Crown” singer said.

In a tweet about his interview with Williams, Kelly called the episode “a real reckoning with what it means to be southern and queer in 2022”.

Williams also spoke to Kelly about the video of the aforementioned single, which includes the songwriter’s first on-screen kiss with a man – his boyfriend.

On the decision to include a gay kiss in “Title Crown”, Williams said: “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,” he continued, adding: “And I just thought it was the perfect opportunity to just show who I was.”

The Proud Radio episode will be released on Sunday (30 October) at 10pm in the UK.