Wasted Time

Keith Urban penned this song with a couple of songwriters who are better known for their work with pop and R&B acts. British American songwriter James "JHart" Abrahart whose other credits include the UK hit songs "Don't Look Down" by Martin Garrix, "Body On Me" by Rita Ora and "Sax" by Fleur East. Canadian producer Greg Wells, who is a frequent collaborator with Katy Perry. His other credits include OneRepublic's worldwide hit "Apologize" and Adele's 21 track, "One and Only."

Urban recalled the story of the song: "I worked with a lot of new people on Ripcord, and Greg (Wells) was one I'd wanted to work with for a long time. He'd been writing a lot with J (James) and so the three of us spent a couple days at Greg's studio to jam and see if we clicked. Greg had this cool chord progression and I grabbed my guitar and started singing a melody." "J suggested the title, and before we knew it, we were talking about growing up and all the things you do, no matter where you are in the world, and the song just took off from there."

While the three songwriters grew up in completely different places, they had many of the same experiences. "I have a lot of that formative years memories from sort of ten to 16, 17 right through there. So, that's a big coming of age, right of passage period in a boy's life," recalled Urban. "And there was a place we had to I think it was called Lime Rock was the name of the little water hole we would go down to and there was a big rope swing that someone had put in a tree and it was a horrendously long drop to the river below and we would often just cut class and go down there and hang out. And I have such great memories of that. It was an exhilarating, exciting time. You know, girls and skipping class and finding somebody that owns a car on a Friday night and pile into that and drive around with nothing to do except hang out at the gas station act important and be somebody that you're not. And it was crazy, you know. I get here to write with these two guys and Greg's [Wells] from Canada and J. [Hart] is from Atlanta, Georgia and yet the three of us had the exact same memories, pretty much the same," he continued. "Different names of drinks, different names of cars, different names of towns, but pretty much all the same things. So, this song really took off when we started writing it."