Released in February 1975 as the album's lead single, "Wildfire" became Murphey's highest-charting pop hit in the United States.

[2] The single continued to sell, eventually receiving platinum certification from the RIAA, signifying sales of over two million US copies.

When Murphey rerecorded "Wildfire" for a new album in 1997, he was quoted by Billboard as saying that what many consider his signature song "broke my career wide open and, on some level, still keeps it fresh.

He believes the song came to him from a story his grandfather told him when he was a little boy – a prominent Native American legend about a ghost horse.

[5] The lyrics are those of a homesteader telling the story of a young Nebraska woman said to have died searching for her escaped pony, "Wildfire", during a blizzard.

In 2007, the host of The Late Show, David Letterman, developed a sudden fascination with "Wildfire", discussing the song and its lyrics — particularly the line about "leave sodbustin' behind" — with bandleader Paul Shaffer over the course of several weeks.

Letterman described the song as "haunting and disturbingly mysterious, but always lovely," and surmised that the performance would leave the studio audience with "a palpable sense of ... mysticism, melancholy ... and uplifting well-being.