Country Song Keith Urban Its Like Im 17 Again
Behind the Vocal: Keith Urban's 'We Were Us'
By Annie Reuter and Kurt Wolff
We didn't hateful for it to become a duet," Jimmy Robbins told Radio.com nearly "We Were Us," the song of his that Keith Urban recorded last year with Miranda Lambert. "That didn't happen until nosotros got to the second poesy, and thought, 'maybe a guy could say this, too.' That'due south when we all got pretty excited about information technology."
Robbins wrote "We Were Us" with two of his regular writing partners, Jon Nite and Nicolle Galyon, and last Nov the song became Urban'south 16th No. one hit. Now it's also been nominated for Song Event of the Year at the 49th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, which take place April 6 in Las Vegas.
Related: Run across all 2014 ACM Award nominees
"It almost didn't happen," Robbins said of the song in a phone interview Monday (March 17) withRadio.com. Equally he recalled, he'd been in a session at his home studio with Nite, and the song idea they had wasn't going in the right management, so they put it aside. Then "that afternoon, our friend Nicole was coming over. We pulled that idea out, and she loved it."
The chorus was their starting point. "Back when that song was a song
I could sing forth without thinkin' 'bout you every time information technology came on," Urban and Lambert sing.
"The forepart half of the chorus nosotros were just singing, and the words phonetically sounded like something," he explained. "A lot of times when you lot write a song, you have a hook or a title, and y'all write from in that location. This was one of those times where nosotros didn't take anything. We didn't know what the hook was until we got at that place."
Robbins credits Galyon with coming up with what he calls the "asunder images" that marking the verses of the vocal.
"I call up Nicole got really into information technology," Robbins said. "She's from a small town in Kansas, and so I think we were really channeling her home town in this song."
"Rearview crosses/Railroad ties/Oh, Hail Marys/Fri nights/Heartbeat baby/Depression-beam lights/God, I miss when you were mine."
-- "Nosotros Were United states of america"
"Information technology's like shooting fish in a barrel to listen to and kinda hard to write, to tell a story without really telling a story," Robbins said. One affair he loves, though, about the result is that it'due south not a literal narrative. "It leaves it up to the individual to slice [the story] together and make it their own."
One of the hitting characteristics of "We Were U.s." that it'south an upbeat duet. "In that location are a lot of duets out there," Robbins said, "but at that place aren't a lot that are uptempo with a feel like that. They tend to be super ballads."
Maybe that characteristic, then, is what helped propel the song to the top of the charts. It was the first male/female duet, in fact, to do so since Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood's "Remind Me" in 2011.
Related: Get the story behind more ACM-nominated songs
"I think that Keith had been toying with the idea of a duet, and my publisher knew that," Robbins said. Equally soon every bit they finished the vocal, "it was on concur with Keith I call back that dark. He loved it and put it on hold right then."
Urban, said Robbins, "had been toying with the thought of a duet, and my publisher knew that."
And Lambert was on Urban's mind already as a duet partner. "He toyed with the idea of a few dissimilar people, but she was e'er his get-go pick," Robbins explained.
Urban agreed. "I just honey Miranda's voice," he told Radio.com in a conversation final September, when he was preparing to release his album Fuse. "I love her artistry. We did some shows together many years ago. She got up and did a vocal with me each dark, and I loved our voices together."
Urban explained that in the back of his mind, he has always hoped that he would notice a song that they could duet on together.
"'We Were Usa' came along, and it's not the kind of song Miranda would commonly exercise, but her vox is the starting time one I heard in my head," he said. "I chosen her upward and sent her the song and she loved information technology and came to the studio. Blake came along as well and hung out for the day. Miranda and I went in and sang the song and I'yard just then happy at the way information technology turned out."
Related: Q&A: Keith Urban Talks About His New Album 'Fuse,' Songwriting & Playing Alive
"We Were U.s.a." tells the story of two former flames looking back on their lost beloved.
As for Lambert, she had just praises for her duet partner, as she explained last fall in a behind-the-scenes video.
"He'due south been someone that'southward inspired me forth the way," she said. "He'south really intense and takes what he does seriously."
Lambert may have been Urban's first option -- and she may take loved the song when he played it for her -- only getting the two of them onto Urban'due south record wasn't easy.
"Information technology was really down to the wire," Robbins said. "She's on a dissimilar record label, then there's a whole other world of cherry-red record -- you then many people that have to corroborate of it for him to be able to apply it." Robbins said he, Nite and Galyon wrote the vocal last March, and and so by the time Urban and Lambert agreed to cut the song, "it was right before [Fuse] was done, and we didn't know if it was going to be on information technology or not."
Ultimately, "Nosotros Were Us" made information technology onto Fuse. And that was a relief for Robbins and his fellow songwriters in more than ways than i.
"Songs get cutting, and don't make records, and get cut again," he explained. "But once nosotros heard Keith and Miranda sing ['We Were Us'], it would have been hard to hear everyone else sing information technology, considering it sounds like information technology was fabricated for them."
The 49th ACM Awards will exist circulate live from Las Vegas on Sunday, April 6, 2014 at 8pm ET on CBS.
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Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/behind-the-song-keith-urbans-we-were-us/
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