Keith Urban’s current single, “Wild Hearts,” is a love letter to the dreamers of the world, encouraging listeners to chase their passion, no matter how many people tell them it can’t be done.
That’s a very personal concept for the singer. “I had plenty of those people in my life that didn’t believe in me,” he admits. “And I probably found that fuel for my fire, even more so than the people who believed in me … Proving them wrong was great motivation.”
Specifically, he remembers something one older country artist told him at a festival in Australia, after he’d just come back from a writing trip to Nashville. The older artist approached him backstage and asked him why he’d been out of town.
“I said, ‘Oh, I’ve been in Nashville writing songs.’ I was so excited. And he looked at me and he says, ‘Yeah, you got to get it out of your system, don’t you?’” Keith recounts. “And I could have punched this guy square in the face. I was so angry at this condescending, jaded thing that this guy said to me.”
The comment hurt in the moment, but as he looks back, Keith acknowledges that he owes a debt of gratitude to that older artist and everyone else who told him he was wasting his time pursuing his musical career.
“I think about that guy a lot, and I’m grateful now that he gave me that fuel to burn on,” he says. “So that second verse [in ‘Wild Hearts’] is kind of a thank you to the people who say you can’t do it, because they give people like me a lot of fuel.”
Fuel indeed: “Wild Hearts” is currently in the top 5 and climbing on the country radio charts.
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