After the release of his debut, full-length album Between the Stones and Jones in 2019, Dustin Sonnier was on quite the hot streak.
He was a few years removed from “Whiskey Makes Her Miss Me,” his breakout song that has caught millions of ears since its release. And with Between the Stones and Jones, he added several more signature songs to his catalog, including “Missin’ You, Mississippi,” “Drinkin’ Alone” and “People Like Me.”
A year after the album’s release, Sonnier penned “The Heart to Hurt Her,” which certainly would have continued that momentum.
Fast forward half a decade, and the song is finally available for his fans to hear. But Sonnier wasn’t stalling, though, he says he was working to perfect the song.
“This one is special to me,” says Sonnier. “I wrote it five years ago, and it went through three different versions before landing on what it is now, so we’ve been hard at work with this one, and I’m ecstatic to finally release it to country music fans everywhere.”
The Louisiana native’s new single offers a fresh take on a country cheating song that examines a new side of hurt in a love triangle.
“I wrote ‘The Heart to Hurt Her’ because I’d never heard a song that touched on this topic: a man seeing the error of his ways and working to right his wrongs, but also hurting another person in the process. It’s kind of a different take on “Holding Her and Loving You,” Sonnier says with a laugh. “It was really out of my element to write about a subject like this, but I’m proud of what it has become.”
As release day came for “The Heart to Hurt Her,” so did plenty of praise for Sonnier’s newest effort.
“When you have as much time and effort invested in a song as I do in this one, you pretty much automatically think it’s a great tune, but when you release a song to the public, you never know how they will receive it,” says Sonnier. “I’m pumped up from seeing the initial response that it’s getting! It still blows my mind that people like songs that started as a few words written on a Waffle House napkin [laughs].”
While he was working to finish “The Heart to Hurt Her,” Sonnier says he was also hard at work with new music, which he plans to roll out in short order.
“The whole time we were recording ‘The Heart to Hurt Her,’ I was still writing songs,” says Sonnier. “I’ve got probably 60 songs that I already have demos of, and we are going to be getting those out to fans as fast as we can!”
Along with new music, Sonnier plans to stay busy for the rest of 2025.
“We’ve got a lot of shows to do and a lot of songs to record, so we’re going to be out there getting that done,” says Sonnier. “I’m also being inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, and that is a great honor for me, so I am excited to see what the rest of 2025 has to offer!”
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