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Johnny Cash means something special to Keith Urban and the country titan broke down how one of the late, great icon's concert inspired his latest single, "Wild Hearts."
Sitting down with PEOPLE (the TV show!), the country chart-topper, 53, addressed a lyric in the uplifting track that recalls a Cash show he and his late father, Bob, attended when he was just 5-years-old. "Look I probably felt like I wasn't the type to get my dad's attention like that," Urban said of why the moment has remained on his mind. "How come? Like what's going on up there?"
"Wild Hearts," which he co-wrote, alongside Brad Tursi, Jennifer Wayne and Eric Paslay, clocks in at three minutes and hears him sing, ”Saw the Man in Black / Spotlight in the air / Heard a thousand screams / Saw my daddy stare." The song was created during lockdown after Urban tried his hand at cooking. "I was gonna learn cooking and I said, 'I can't cook!' I think Nic was gonna learn a language and didn't. Yeah, we had all sorts of plans that just ... no," he said of himself and his wife, Nicole Kidman, 54. "That's not true actually, Nic got better at her Italian."
Urban also admitted that it was his dad that "exposed him to music early on,” but his mom, Marienne, is also to credit for his success. "But my mom as well — I mean, she drove me around to all of these singing talent shows," he added.