On February 24th, 2001, Keith Urban scored his first No. 1 single, “But for the Grace of God.” He co-wrote the song with Jane Weiland and Charlotte Caffey from The Go-Gos, and it appeared on his 1999 self-titled album, Keith Urban.
Keith is now on the cusp of scoring his 20th No. 1 single with “Break on Me,” the second release from his upcoming album, Ripcord.
Audio / At the No. 1 party for “But For the Grace of God,” The Go-Gos’ Jane Weiland, who co-wrote the song with Keith and her bandmate Charlotte Caffey, explained that she had some preconceived notions when she came to write with Keith, and it didn’t turn out the way she expected.
DownloadJane Weiland (Keith Urban) OC: …on the eyes. :36
“Keith knows who he is, and you can’t make him be who you want him to be, which is how the session started out. I know I came in with some preconceived notions of him being kind of like a sort of rockabilly-crossover-country guy, and I’m like, ‘No, you should do this,’ and he’s like, ‘nope, nope, nope.’ And I’m like, ‘Dang it! He won’t listen to me!’ And that’s ‘cause he knows who he is, and I think that is really one of the most important character qualifications that an artist needs to have. In Keith’s case, he’s the finest guitar player I’ve ever seen, literally the finest guitar player, and he is a pitch-perfect singer and he is easy on the eyes.”
Audio / At the No. 1 party for “But For the Grace of God,” Keith Urban said the writing session with Jane Weiland and Charlotte Caffey of The Go-Gos didn’t start off well, but when they were about to throw in the towel, a title sparked the song.
DownloadKeith Urban (The Go-Gos) OC: …came out. :32
“From The Go-Gos session that I did with the two girls, I just thought it was a disastrous idea to begin with, theoretically it looks pretty bad. They had these ideas, and they were tossing out these ideas, and they were just so not me. It was so mismatched, and I was uncomfortable and squirming in my chair, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow! (laughs) whatever.’ And it was it. We decided this was a complete waste of time, let’s go get something to eat, and then Charlotte said, ‘Well, I’ve got this title called ‘But For the Grace of God,’ and boom, the song came out.”
