Keith Urban celebrated the two-week No. 1 success of his recent smash, “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” with a party at Nashville’s Basement East on Friday (March 3rd). The song, written by Hillary Lindsey, Steven Lee Olsen and Clint Lagerberg, was one Keith gravitated toward immediately.
“It was just an immediate reaction I had to that song,” says Keith. “I loved the lyric, the sentiment, the melody, everything about it. Yeah, it was beautiful.”
Taking the stage with all three co-writers, producer/guitarist Dann Huff and two of his bandmembers, bassist Jerry Flowers and drummer Seth Rausch, Keith performed the tune that spent two weeks at the top of the country charts, sharing vocals with Steven and Hillary
The song was originally going to go on Steven Lee Olsen’s record, but he told his publishing company the only artist he’d let record “Blue” was Keith, who is the reason the songwriter moved from Canada to Nashville.
“Blue Ain’t Your Color” is nominated for both Single and Song of the Year at this year’s ACM Awards. Keith is the leading nominee with seven, including Entertainer of the Year, Album of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year. The 52nd Academy of Country Music Awards, hosted by Luke Bryan and Dierks Bentley, will be broadcast live from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on April 2nd at 8pm ET/delayed PT on CBS.
Audio / Keith Urban talks about his immediate reaction to “Blue Ain’t Your Color.”
DownloadKeith Urban (Blue Ain’t Your Color No. 1) OC: …beautiful. :19
“It was just immediate. I just, Missy Gallimore sent me this song, and Steven Lee [Olsen] was singing it – he’s a killer singer – and it was just an immediate reaction I had to that song. I loved the lyric, the sentiment, the melody, everything about it. Yeah, it was beautiful.”
Audio / Hillary Lindsey, Clint Lagerberg ad Steven Lee Olsen talk about pitching “Blue Ain’t Your Color” to Keith Urban.
DownloadKeith Urban (Blue writers on how it was pitched to Keith) OC: (Clint) …made it his. :54
HILLARY: “We were just screaming hallelujah. I mean, we wrote the song for Steven for his record, right? And then we decided, well Steven decided, ‘I don’t want any of my songs to be pitched,’ at least that’s the story I heard, ‘but if there’s one song on this record that I want to be pitched it would be ‘Blue Ain’t Your Color,’ but the only person you can pitch it to is Keith Urban.’” STEVEN: “It is true.” [laughter] HILLARY: “So, I didn’t know if it’d actually make it to your ears or not, you know?” CLINT: “What Keith did with it too, ‘cause Steven and I lived with it for so long for his record and how it sounded, it was hard to imagine it any other way. But then when we heard Keith’s version, it was like, ‘Omigosh.’ The simplicity of it is, ah, he just got out of the way of the whole spirit of it and made it his.”
