Keith Urban recalls life-changing moment involving his dad and Johnny Cash

Keith Urban's latest hit song, "Wild Hearts," has a hidden and sentimental meaning behind it.

As it turns out, he is sharing one of his pivotal childhood memories when he sings, "Saw the man in black / Spotlight in the air / Heard a thousand screams / Saw my dad's stare."

The freedom anthem came to Urban from its songwriters -- Old Dominion's Brad Tursi, Runaway June's Jennifer Wayne and Eric Paslay -- but it resonated with the Aussie superstar so much that he asked if he could change the verses to make them more personal.

"I sat down and thought about my journey, and when did that begin?" Urban recently told reporters. "And the very first thing that popped in my head was probably when my dad took our family to see Johnny Cash."

"I was 5, and that's an impactful concert to see at any point in your life," he said. "But when you're 5, it was something else."

It's an experience that Urban said helped propel him into a life performing in the biggest arenas around the globe.

"The things I remembered mostly about it were, of course, this guy up on stage," he recalled. "I remember this white-hot spotlight coming all the way from the back of the room. It was huge. I remember the screaming of this crowd."

"And then I remember looking up at my dad and seeing the way that he looked at this person on stage," he continued. "And probably subconsciously, I probably thought, 'I've never seen my dad look at me like that.' And so that probably was the beginning of my journey."

"Wild Hearts" ended up being so powerful for him, Urban said he decided to immediately release it into the world.