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.