Country singer Keith Urban said the rendition of his 2002 hit single 'Somebody Like You', which he tagged as "not so great", in the 2003 film 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' served as a reminder to "stay true to who you are".
Keith revealed that the rendition was not good because as he said he "made a deal with the devil". Urban was on SiriusXM's "Highway Mornings" when the show’s co-host brought up his 2002 single being featured in the 2003 romantic-comedy film, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, reports etonline.com.
Asked if he thought it was "so cool" to have that song featured, Urban said that the experience was "a great example of learning early on the price of coming "pretty darn close" to "selling out" to Hollywood.
Urban added that after he got asked to include the song as part of the film's soundtrack, studio executives came back to him with confusing notes. "There was a, 'Oh, by the way, you sing it kind of country-ish'. And I'm like, 'I just sing the way I sing'," Urban recalled.
"And they’re like, 'Yeah, we just wondered if you could re-do the vocal.' And I was like, 'Oh, OK. Well, it's a big film. OK. Let's do that'." However, the experience left him even more stunned.
"There must have been an army of people from Los Angeles on whatever the equivalent of Zoom was back then, but they put them into my headphones," Urban said.
"I'm in the studio in Nashville. There’s all these executives from the film talking in my headphones while I’m at the microphone doing this vocal, almost coaching me how to sing this song."
Urban said he made a shocking realisation. "I've made a deal with the devil here. There’s no getting out of this," he continued.
"And they’re like, 'Kinda sing it a bit more Bob Seger. Put a little more growl in the voice if you could.' And I'm just like, 'Oh, what am I doing?!' And we go through it. And I think the end result was not that great. But I was like, 'Rule number one, just stay true to who you are'."