Country Singer Kylie Rae Harris’ Last Single ‘Twenty Years From Now’ Was Dedicated to Her Daughter

Country singer Kylie Rae Harris passed away at age 30 in a car crash in New Mexico on Wednesday, Sept. 4, just around five months after releasing her last single, “20 Years from Now.”

Harris wrote the song with Jon Randall months after she lost her father to cancer at age 54, telling Billboard that his passing inspired her to pen the emotional track.

“It scared me thinking that it was totally possible I could be gone before my daughter reaches that point,” she said. “I want to meet my kid’s kids. Getting to the age your parents were when you were a child brings a whole lot of perspective.”

The 30-year-old had her then two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Corbie in mind when she wrote the song’s lyrics, which read, “You deserve nothing less than happiness / And so do I / Twenty years from now / My prayer is that somehow / You’ll forgive all my mistakes and be proud of the choice I made / God I hope I’m still around / Twenty years from now.”

Harris shared that she got the idea for the song, which she described as the most important one she’s ever written, during a drive from Tulsa to Nashville after a tough visit with Corbie’s dad.

“I held my feelings together for most of the drive, but once I saw that little baby asleep in the backseat I pulled over and bawled my eyes out. I had no clue what I was doing, but I knew that I loved her fiercely, and prayed that one day she would come to her own conclusions about everything and see that I did the best that I knew how to,” she said. “Jon Randall and I wrote the song shortly after I got back home from that trip. It was a pretty emotionally brutal writing/therapy session, and we were very careful to try not to shine a negative light on anyone while still telling my truth.”

“Parents are people,” she continued. “People make mistakes and being a parent is hard. I’m not always going to make the right choices, but I hope that when Corbie gets older she’ll see that they were all made with love and the best of intentions.”

Harris reflected on the song in a May Instagram post in which she shared that Corbie had just finished kindergarten.

“The little girl I wrote ‘Twenty Years From Now’ about finishes Kindergarten tomorrow,” she captioned a series of emotional photos from a recording session. “Today she was awarded ‘The Canary Award’ for always singing or humming. I’m proud of both of us. We’re a good team, and we’s good people trying (most of the time) to be the very best reflection of our inner-selves. The ones God intended us to be…”

Photo Credit: Torrez Music Group