Nineteen

Album: The Distance (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • Hicks explained to the Birmingham News about this story of a teenage football star who joins the armed forces after the 9/11 attacks: "It's American and honest, the story of a war hero. Our war heroes sometimes happen to be 19 years old. I felt it was relevant right now."
  • Singer-songwriter Tom Hambridge together with Nashville songwriters Gary Nicholson and Jeffrey Steele penned this ballad. It was originally a Country hit for the duo Waycross in 2007, peaking at #54.
  • An earlier song with a similar theme of a 19-year-old soldier is "Nineteen" by the British electronic musician Paul Hardcastle. A transatlantic hit in 1985, Hardcastle was managed at the time by American Idol creator Simon Fuller. The British pop guru's company, 19 Entertainment, took its name from the song.
  • Billy Ray Cyrus covered the song in 2012, taking it to #58 on the Country chart.

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