1975 Soft Rock Hit, One of the Saddest Songs of the ‘70s, Started With a Dream
In 1975, Michael Martin Murphey released what would become his biggest hit with "Wildfire."
The song, which appeared on the album Blue Sky-Night Thunder, peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 21, 1975, and became the singer's signature song. Written about the ghosts of a woman and her horse, "Wildfire" is often recalled as one of the saddest songs of the ‘70s more than 50 years later.
‘Wildfire' was spawned by a dream
Murphey wrote "Wildfire" with co-writer Larry Cansler. In an interview with NPR, he recalled coming up with lyrics about a girl who died searching for her lost white pony in a blizzard. The story came to Murphey in a vivid dream while he was sleeping on the floor at Cansler's house.
"I had a dream, and I dreamed the lyrics. I woke up and I had it in my head," Murphey shared. "It was literally just something came right out of my subconscious - mystical inspiration, whatever you want to call it, but I can't say that I did anything mechanical."
The singer admitted he spent years trying to interpret his dream.
"I'd had this dream about a horse," he told D magazine. "I wrote down all these images. I have no idea what they mean. …We wrote that song probably in two hours. And I've been trying my whole life to figure out where that one came from."
Murphey shared more insight into the songwriting process in an interview with The Boot.
"The night ‘Wildfire' came to me …I dreamed the song in its entirety," he recalled. "I woke up and pounded on Larry's door and said, ‘Can you come down and help me with this song?' His wife got up and made us coffee, and we finished it in two or three hours."
"The song came from deep down in my subconsciousness," Murphey continued, adding that he had deep memories of an old cowboy story his grandfather once told him about a legendary ghost horse.
"I also think a lot of it is wrapped up in my Christian upbringing: In the Biblical book of Revelations, it talks about Jesus coming back on a white horse. … I was a cowboy kid with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, so when the preacher told me that Jesus would come back for me on a white horse, I was all wrapped up in that. In the ghost story, the horse is a symbol of the Savior."
A surprise hit
Murphey had some trouble convincing his record producer to include "Wildfire" on the Blue Sky-Night Thunder album.
"Of the material that I proposed for that album, the one song that Bob Johnston didn't care for was 'Wildfire.' He said, ‘I just don't think that one is going to have a chance,'' Murphey shared in an interview with Lonestar Music. "I said, ‘Just let me put it on the record as an album cut.' He did not see how ‘Wildfire' fit into the other songs I had written."
Murphey pushed hard for "Wildfire" and won that battle. He recalled that after he recorded the album at Caribou Ranch in Colorado, he played it for the kitchen staff.
"And they were all girls who were 18, 20, 22 years old working there. And they went nuts over 'Wildfire,'" he recalled. "So Bob said, 'Well, what do I know? Let's tell Epic Records that the girls liked the song.' …. So Bob called up and said, 'We're getting a great reaction from people who have heard the album to ‘Wildfire,' we think you should push this as a single.' Even though in those days, you'd put an album out and then wait to see what radio would play from it. But ‘Wildfire' is the one that took off. That was the biggest thing I'd ever had anything to do with."
As for what the song came to mean for him, Murphey told NPR, "The song is very much about escaping hard times."
"As I look back, I've realized ‘Wildfire' led me down a lot of paths that I was able to realize my dream of riding that magic horse the way I did ride a magic horse," he shared. "It was a song, and it was a dream."
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This story was originally published April 27, 2026 at 3:26 AM.