Hank Williams Jr.’s Son Sam Williams Comes Out

When Sam Williams, son of conservative musician Hank Williams Jr. and grandson of country legend Hank Williams, decided to come out in a video, he utilized his new single, "Tilted Crown," to speak his truth.

"I felt like I was promoting invisibility, like I wasn't being visible and wasn't being myself," Williams told Apple Music's Proud Radio With Hunter Kelly. "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."

He also shared what it was like to come out for the first time, to his sister Katie, who died in June 2020 in a horrific car crash.

"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.'"

In the video, Williams watches a play of his life, which includes his famous lineage. But he makes certain to point out that the fatherhood references are not specifically about his own life.

"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 ... 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.'"

With touching moments that entail learning to play guitar, putting on eyeliner, and that first on-screen kiss, the music and the message are moving. Watch the video below.