Toby Keith reflected on one of the first songs he wrote days before his death.
Toby Keith reflected on one of the first songs he wrote days before his death
The 62-year-old singer died of stomach cancer on Monday (05.02.24) and a video he recently shared showed him opening up about how he penned a tune about heartache when he was aged 14.
He said: “The first song I ever wrote, I was 14 or 15 years old, it was called ‘If You Had an Out of Heartache’ – it wasn’t bad, it was structured right, but it weren’t very good either.
“But the people round here, when I played it, they were like, ‘Wow, that’s a great song.’
“It’s just a song, that was 5,000 songs ago.”
Toby’s final Instagram post was a video uploaded the day before his death, showed him playing a rowdy live show, which he captioned: “And that’s a wrap on the weekend, y’all. Back to it.”
The country music icon, best known for songs including ‘How Do You Like Me Now?!’ and ‘Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue’, was hit with his cancer diagnosis in 2021.
A statement posted to his X account about his death said: “Toby Keith passed peacefully last night on February 5th, surrounded by his family.
“He fought his fight with grace and courage. Please respect the privacy of his family at this time.”
Toby is survived by his wife Tricia Lucus, who he married in 1984, and their children Shelley, 44, Krystal, 38, and 27-year-old son Stelen.
Months after his cancer diagnosis, Toby admitted he had found the disease “pretty debilitating”, but insisted he still had hope for the future.
He told Country Music Television’s ‘Hot 20’: “I’m thinking about getting back into fighting shape.
“It’s pretty debilitating to have to go through all that, but as long as everything stays hunky-dory, then we’ll look at something good in the future I need a little bit of time to just rest up and heal up.”
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