Hunter Hayes is on a steady climb to being one of country music's greatest singer-songwriters of his generation. The song that really put him on the map was his second single, "Wanted," penned by Hayes and Troy Verges as part of an experiment to see how well the two would work together. The end result was one of the biggest songs of Verges' songwriting career and a multi-week chart-topping hit for Hayes. We recently chatted with Verges about the day the two wrote the song, and here is what he had to say!
"This was maybe the fourth or fifth time Hunter and I had written together," Verges tells Roughstock. "We had met when he first got signed to Universal Publishing. I am from Louisiana and Hunter is from Louisiana. Cindy Foreman up there was like, 'You guys need to meet and see if you gel!' So we started writing a few songs. I have a giant grand piano in my studio. I am a mediocre piano player, so I love it when people come over who can play it. Hunter jumped up on the piano and just started playing the lick that is the intro of 'Wanted.'
"It was just real easy to write," Verges continues. "It came really fast. The only hiccup we had in the song was -- and we've talked about it since, it's pretty funny -- there's one line in the song ... like everything that's green girl, I need you. That was Hunter's line. I was like, 'I don't know what that means ... I'm not sure that should go in there.' He really fought for it, and now it's like a lot of peoples favorite part of the song. We were talking about that when I was out on the road writing with him a few weeks ago. Gordie Sampson was out there with us, and he was like, 'Dude, that's my favorite part of the song!' It's just so funny. You can get so inside of a song, you never know what's going to be the part that pops out. I am so glad that Hunter stood his ground and said, 'No, this is going in the song!'
"After we finished the song, it got a really good reaction from a lot of people," recalls Verges. "It's probably been the biggest song I've had in my career as far as public reaction goes. You just never know what's going to be the one that takes over like that one has. Everything was exactly right about this song."
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