He’s one of country music’s hottest rising stars, with 15 No. 1 songs already to his credit. He’s collaborated with everyone from Morgan Wallen and Florida Georgia Line to Fred Durst and Zakk Wylde. He worships at the altars of Chris Stapleton, Led Zeppelin and Linkin Park. And he’s also stabbed a wild pig to death. Say hello to Nashville’s nu-metal loving hitmaker: HARDY.
The 33-year-old singer-songwriter, born Michael Wilson Hardy, first caught the attention of the rock world with his 2023 solo album the mockingbird & THE CROW, which was split into two halves — a country side and a hard-rock side — the latter featuring vocals from A Day to Remember’s Jeremy McKinnon on “RADIO SONG.” That album was a smash: It topped the Country Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Hard Rock Albums charts and rose to the No. 4 spot on the Billboard 200.
Such musical diversity comes natural to HARDY, who first got into hard rock and metalcore as a high school student in the small town of Philadelphia, Mississippi.
“I had a couple of buddies in my high school that were like little scene kids, believe it or not,” he tells Revolver. “One of ’em played me a band one time called Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. I was 17 years old, and I was like, ‘Dude, that is dope — what is that?’ He was like, ‘Let me burn you a CD of some stuff,’ and he made me kind of a hardcore and metal mixtape with Emmure, Maylene, the Ghost Inside, A Day to Remember, August Burns Red, all these bands that I just fell in love with. And that’s how I discovered metal.”
HARDY’s hard-rocking side comes even more to the fore on his new album Quit!! The hilarious video for “ROCKSTAR,” the record’s anthemic lead single, features HARDY impersonating a range of rock icons, including Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, AC/DC’s Angus Young and Queen’s Freddie Mercury. Quit!! also boasts a couple notable rock cameos, with Durst himself lending vocals to the brooding “SOUL4SALE” and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith serving up some slamming beats on “GOOD GIRL PHASE.”
Of course, there’s still plenty of down-home twang in HARDY’s delivery — as evidenced on his recent revamp of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice,” a recording that led to him making a highly entertaining promotional video with Snoop, Dr. Dre and actress Nicola Peltz Beckham for Dre and Snoop’s new line of alcoholic beverages, Gin & Juice. But HARDY’s love for the harder stuff comes across as deep and genuine, which is why we thought he’d make an ideal candidate for our Greatest Interview Ever feature. We were right — so strap in for this wild ride of country hits, nu-metal worship and that one time HARDY got treed by a raging hog.
YOU’VE HAD 15 NO. 1 SONGS ON COUNTRY RADIO. WHAT IS THE GREATEST SONG YOU’VE EVER WRITTEN?
HARDY Oh, god — you’re just coming out swinging. [Laughs] Greatest? Man, I’ve gotta go with a song that was not even a single but was the title track on my first real debut record. It’s called “A ROCK,” and I just think that that’s the coolest, best song I’ve ever written.
Honestly, I think that me and my collaborators [Smith Ahnquist and Jake Mitchell], we just nailed a concept. We told a story about life and about your experience on earth, and I just think we wrote it to the wall. I think it’s perfect, but it’s very different. It’s not like it’s a hit song — it doesn’t have a chorus or anything like that. But I just think that we couldn’t have done any better with that one. When I’m thinking about the best songs that I’ve written, that’s always the first one that comes to mind.
WHAT’S THE SONG YOU’RE PROUDEST OF WRITING?
The song I’m the proudest of is probably [the mockingbird & THE CROW’s] “wait in the truck” [featuring Lainey Wilson]. It’s a song that, on paper, should not have been a hit in country music at that moment, because it’s about murdering somebody in cold blood. It’s a very polarizing situation. And I’m proud that we wrote that song and we wrote it the way we did. We didn’t sugarcoat anything, and we killed the guy point blank. But I’m also proud that it actually turned into a big hit.
Songs like that don’t necessarily make it or survive in country music anymore. They used to, but they just don’t anymore. So I’m just proud that it did so well, and that it affected so many people in a positive way — like people that were abused and stuff like that. It’s just a full spectrum of proud when it comes to that song.
WHAT’S THE CRAZIEST GIFT YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED FROM A FAN?
This isn’t that crazy, but I have a couple of superfans, and the first time I ever met them they gave me this little case. I collect arrowheads — I find them a lot where I live, and it’s a hobby of mine — and they gave me a case that just had an arrowhead and a blunt in it. [Laughs]
WHAT’S THE GREATEST ROCK ALBUM THAT YOU DIDN’T LIKE AT FIRST, BUT YOU NOW LOVE?
Hysteria, Def Leppard. When I was growing up and getting into nu-metal and discovering metal metal for the first time, for some reason that album made my skin crawl. [Laughs] And now I cannot get enough of that record. Dude, I’ve frickin’ listened to it on repeat for years now. I love it. Mutt Lange is such an animal. He did tricks and things that make it sound like a record that could come out today. It’s awesome.
WHAT’S THE MOST STARSTRUCK YOU’VE EVER BEEN?
I mean, I want to say it was Snoop Dogg, but I didn’t feel like I was in shell shock at all when I met him. It was just: “There’s Snoop!” He was so cool; I felt like I had known him my whole life, that kind of thing.
Actually, I think Wiz Khalifa would be the number one, just because I wasn’t expecting him. Myself and ERNEST and Morgan Wallen played Staples Center [in L.A.] back in the day, and we’d heard a rumor that Wiz was there. And then at the end of the night, I’m walking out — and around the corner comes Wiz. He yells my name out, and he runs up and gives me a hug. He was like, “Dude, I’m a fan. That show was awesome!” And I was speechless, because I was not expecting it. With Snoop, I knew I was about to go hang out with him, so I was prepared. But when Wiz came around the corner, that sent me into shock, for real.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR GREATEST SUCCESS TO DATE?
For me, it’s being named BMI Country Songwriter of the Year in 2022. That’s my biggest victory, because it’s not a voted thing — it’s based on performance, like how many songs you had on the radio and how they performed and this and that. That’s a really, really hard award to get, and I’m incredibly honored to have gotten it. That was a big one for me. It was a very good year!
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST REGRET?
Hmm… Let me think about this for a second here… I just don’t know if I have one, man. I’m big on: “Everything happens for a reason — trust the process.” I don’t look back at my music career and think, I should have done this differently or done that differently. I feel pretty good about it.
WHAT IS THE GREATEST LIVE ROCK BAND YOU’VE EVER SEEN?
I mean, I’ve seen KISS, but that seems like too easy of an answer. I’m trying to think of what would beat that… but I’ve gotta go with KISS. The first and only time I saw them was their very first farewell tour. I think it was like 2000, so I was probably 10 or 11 years old. It was in Jackson, Mississippi, at the Coliseum. It was pretty awesome, man! How do you beat KISS’ live show?
WHAT’S THE MOST “ROCK STAR” THING YOU’VE EVER PURCHASED?
I’m sitting here looking at it right now. This is like “rock star” but it’s also country boy: I have a Ford F-150 King Ranch that’s completely wrapped in camouflage and just decked out to the redneck nines, and I love it. I’ve sunk a bunch of money into it, but it’s my favorite thing in the world. I mean, I’m a watch guy, so I buy watches and stuff every now and then. But when I think of just the silliest thing that I’ve bought, it is definitely my big camo truck. I bought the truck itself when I got my first songwriting check from my first No. 1, and that was in January of 2019, and then I did all the decked-out stuff at the end of 2022. I have the itch about twice a year to blow a bunch of money, and that was just one of those times. [Laughs]
WHAT’S THE BEST SHOW YOU’VE EVER PLAYED?
My favorite one that comes to mind is Faster Horses in 2021. It’s a festival in Michigan, and we had a day slot — we went on at 5 p.m. But it was at a very momentous moment in my career. There was just a lot of hype, and we could feel it out in the crowd. And there was like 28,000 people there. My Live Nation rep was like, “Dude, there’s never been this many people here at this time of day. You should go out there and just pretty much fuck ’em up!”
It was the most insane crowd we had ever played for, and we just destroyed them. We only had eight or 10 songs to play, because we only had like a 30- or 40-minute slot; but man, we just absolutely brought the house down — and the crowd was so, so good. We’re going back this year, and we’re headlining it this time, which I’m super stoked about.
ON THE FLIP SIDE OF THAT, WHAT’S THE WORST SHOW YOU’VE EVER PLAYED?
I can tell you that answer — it was a place called Ziggy Mahoney’s, on St. Simons Island in Georgia. This was in 2019, and my first single, “REDNECKER,” was Top 30 at country radio, and we were trying to tap into the headlining circuit. We go in this place and meet the guy that owned the club. I said, “Who promoted the show?” And he was like, “What do you mean? … Nobody — but we put up a bunch of signs around town, and I texted a bunch of people to come to the show.” And I’m like, Oh, God, it’s like that kind of thing. [Laughs] And sure enough, man, we had a full hour-and-a-half set, production and everything.
And I think there were 13 people there. There was not a single person in front of the stage, and there was one point where this guy like sat on the stage to tie his shoe. People were coming up and making requests like we were a cover band. It was very humbling, and it made me want to work twice as hard, because I was like, I never want to be in this position ever again.
WHAT WAS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING ONSTAGE MOMENT?
We were playing a show in Fort Carson, Colorado. I had these really tight blue jeans on, and the first four or five rows of people were kind of whispering to each other and pointing at me. I was like, What the hell are they talking about? Because I felt like I was having a good show. And then at the end of the show, I realized that my fly was unzipped and just wide open; you could see my underwear and all that stuff. And I know that’s really not that bad, but to have to go the whole show and never figure it out, and have people kind of laughing at you the whole time… If I would have realized that halfway through, I could have at least made a joke about it, like, “Nobody wanted to tell me to zip my fly?” But going the whole show and not knowing that was so embarrassing.
WHAT’S THE MOST METAL THING YOU’VE EVER DONE?
Dude, I’m a deer hunter. So, I mean, just pick whatever. [Laughs] I would say probably stabbing a pig to death. Where I’m from in Mississippi, we have a lot of wild pigs, so we’ve had to do damage control a lot through the years. I don’t know if I can top that one.
SPEAKING OF YOUR SONG “REDNECKER” — WHAT’S THE MOST RED-NECK THING YOU’VE EVER DONE?
Yeah, I knew that was coming. [Laughs] I mean, it all just seems kind of normal to me, but I remember one time when I was in high school, I got home and there was a big squirrel in the backyard. I ran into the house to try to find my pellet gun. I couldn’t find it, so I grabbed this golf ball from my room and I threw that golf ball at the squirrel, which was sitting up in this tree, and I killed him. I’m a very respectful hunter — I eat what I hunt. So after I killed the squirrel, I cleaned him, dressed him, and then I cooked him and I ate him. Maybe that’s a little brutal, but that’s probably one of the more redneck things that I’ve done.
WHAT WAS THE GREATEST THING ABOUT GROWING UP IN MISSISSIPPI?
One thing that I really love about Mississippi is there’s no cities; it’s just a state full of small towns. Even Jackson, Mississippi, is actually really small; it’s less than 300,000 people, I think. And I’ve always thought that was great; it’s like there’s one degree of separation between everybody in the state — and everybody kind of knows somebody. But specifically in my hometown, we have the Neshoba County Fair, and it’s like the coolest county fair in the world. The whole city shuts down for like a week, and everybody goes out there to all these family-owned cabins and parties. There’s nothing else like it in the United States; it’s really special and really different. It’s not like I took it for granted growing up, because I loved it. But now having played pretty much every fair in the country, I’m like, Wow, that was a really special place.
WHAT WAS THE SCARIEST EXPERIENCE YOU HAD WHILE GROWING UP?
So, speaking of pigs, we used to have to set this hog trap. It wasn’t where our house was; it was like 15 minutes away on our home property, and my dad would be like, “Go out there and check the hog trap and see if we caught anything.”
There was one particular day when I was about 16 or 17 — I could drive by this time — where I pull up and, sure enough, there’s some pigs in the hog trap. And right as I’m pulling up, this big sow, this big mother hog, she somehow manages to jump on the backs of the smaller ones and jump up onto the edge of the trap, and then teeter herself so she falls over on the other side. And when she did, she chased me for like 100 yards and ran me up a deer stand! [Laughs] I sat up there, and she sat there down below and watched me for like, 30 minutes. I had to call my dad; I’m like, “Hey, I’m trapped up here. I don’t have a gun, and I’ve got this 300-pound sow just walking circles around this deer stand, and she won’t leave!” She eventually left, but my dad had to come out there. I don’t even know what the consequence would have been; she would have probably bit me a little bit or something, but man I was scared to death!
WHAT WAS THE DUMBEST THING YOU EVER DID AS A TEENAGER TO TRY TO IMPRESS A GIRL?
I remember I was dating this girl when I was a senior in high school, and I’d just got a brand-new truck. It was like a black Chevy Silverado, but I was really proud of it. We were cruising around town one time, and we whipped into this parking lot. I thought I was gonna be cool and just whip through a couple of parking spaces. But you know how in a Walmart, or just any parking lot, there are light poles in the middle with concrete cylinders kind of holding them? Well, if you’re high enough up, you can’t see ’em — I hit one of those things so hard, and it just screwed up the whole left side of my truck and I was so embarrassed. And I’d only had the truck for like two weeks. That was rough. [Laughs]
WHAT WAS THE WORST TROUBLE YOU EVER GOT INTO AS A KID?
When I was 16 or 17, I discovered weed. [Laughs] I got in pretty good trouble — not with the law, thankfully — but when my folks finally caught on. What happened was that one of our buddies’ moms smelled it on him and made him take a drug test. He tested positive, and then after that all the parents, they knew, you know? My dad busted me, and it was bad. I was on lockdown for like a month, man. I didn’t do anything but fuckin’ read. That’s all I could do. [Laughs] It was in the wintertime, and finally I was like, “Will you at least let me go deer hunting?” They were like, “Yeah, you can go deer hunting on this one day.”
So I drove my truck out in the woods and parked where I usually parked it. It was like 35-40 degrees, and a torrential downpour came while I was in the deer stand. I walked back to my truck, and my truck was completely stuck in the mud. I didn’t have a phone, so I had to walk like a mile and a half and knock on somebody’s door, some random guy, and ask him to come pull me out. I was soaking wet, and I didn’t get back until like nine o’clock that night, and my parents were pissed. They were like, “You said you were going deer hunting. Where the hell have you been?” And I was like, “I swear to God, my truck got stuck and I couldn’t call anybody, because I didn’t have my phone!”
WHO, IN YOUR OPINION, IS THE GREATEST ROCK SINGER OF ALL TIME?
Robert Plant. I love him! I wish I could have seen Led Zeppelin in their prime. But yeah, Robert Plant is number one to me; it’s not even close. My second favorite is Myles Kennedy, though.
WHO’S THE GREATEST COUNTRY SINGER OF ALL TIME?
I would be remiss if I didn’t say Chris Stapleton. Keith Whitley was amazing, but I just think if you’re saying the greatest as far as, like, skill, it’s hard to not say Chris Stapleton.
WHAT’S THE GREATEST NU-METAL ALBUM OF ALL TIME?
Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park. I mean, as bad as I want to say a Limp Bizkit record, every single song on Hybrid Theory is just perfect to me. My parents bought it for me for Christmas 2000. I got it when it was brand new, and I wore it out. I listened to it until it was so scratched up it wouldn’t play anymore.
WHAT’S THE GREATEST METALCORE ALBUM OF ALL TIME?
Oh, gosh. People are gonna bash me for this, I’m sure — but I’m gonna go Messengers by August Burns Red. There’s so many good ones, but Messengers is my favorite. That’s another album where every song had something awesome to it.
WHAT’S THE GREATEST DREAM THAT YOU HAVE YET TO ACHIEVE?
I think to be in a hall of fame one day would be really cool. And I know I’ve got a long way to go when it comes to that type of thing. But other than that, I think to have one of the greatest albums ever, which I know is also extremely hard to do, and I’ve got a long way to go on that. But just in general, going down in history — and not being forgotten in the music industry for a long time — is a big dream of mine.