Keith Urban is a big, big fan of Lainey Wilson. Urban still vividly remembers hearing her voice for the first time, long before Wilson was a household name.
“I heard her voice before she put anything out.,” Urban recalls on MuchMusic, adding that a friend of his happened to be working with Wilson at the time. “I got access to a song that she recorded, and I heard her voice. So I heard her voice before I saw her, or met her. And I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. Who is this, and what is that voice?’ It’s one of those rare things. It’s like hearing Reba McEntire or Dolly Parton for the first time.
“You just go, ‘That doesn’t sound like anyone else. What is that?’ ” he continues. “And then I met her, and it was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re that voice.’ When you hear her talk and meet her as a person, it’s all — just like Reba and Dolly, the greats — it all goes together.”
Urban knew right away that he wanted to work with Wilson, and correctly guessed that their voices would blend well together on “Go Home W U.”
“I was trying to find a song for us to do, and that song was already written, but it wasn’t a duet,” Urban reveals. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, she’d probably kill taking the second verse on that song.’ So that’s how it came to be.”
“As soon as you hear her voice, you’re like, ‘She’s the real deal,'” he adds.
“Go Home W U” was written by BRELAND, Sam Sunser and Sean Small, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were in lockdown, and we couldn’t go anywhere, so we were like, ‘Let’s just write a bunch of songs,'” Urban remembers. “And one of the songs we wrote was ‘Go Home W U,’ because I was like, ‘Man, wouldn’t it be great to be playing in a bar right now, with everyone, just celebrating and hanging out and drinking and singing and everything.’ So I’m like, ‘Let’s just write a song and imagine that bar,’ and that’s why ‘Go Home W U’ has the spirit of that.”
Urban has recorded plenty of duets and collaborations over the years. But he admits that something magical happened when Wilson added her voice to his on “Go Home W U.”
“I sent her the track, and she recorded her vocal somewhere and then sent it back to me,” Urban recounts. “I have a studio, so I remember pushing up the fader and hearing her voice for the first time, and just getting chills. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s killing it. This is great.’ So that’s a really great memory, hearing her voice on it for the first time.”
Urban will embark on his High and Alive World Tour on May 22 in Orange Beach, Alabama. He currently has a Top 40 hit with “Straight Line ,” from his latest HIGH album. Find music and tour dates at KeithUrban.com.