Keith Urban Talks ‘Following The Muse’ Ahead Of New Album ‘High’ [Interview]

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Keith Urban

In 2022, four-time Grammy winner Keith Urban was working on a new album. It was to follow 2020’s The Speed of Now Part 1 as his 13th studio project.

He was also on a world tour at the time. In order to keep the album on track, Urban set up a rigorous schedule of returning to Nashville soon after a show, working on the record and going back out. He was even going to call it 615 because of his dedication to getting home and working on the collection.

What Urban found with the new schedule, however, was stress and creative limitations, which was not conducive to making an album. So, he decided to scrap 615.

“I’ve never had a theme or a concept for an album ever. Every album I’ve ever made has been very loose in a lot of ways,” Urban tells MusicRow. “Dann Huff, who’s made so many of them with me, would testify that we may have a plan to record a song one day and I might get to the session and say, ‘I’m not really in the mood for this song. I feel like this one might be better.'”

Urban’s spontaneity when in the studio has lended itself to the diverse range of projects he’s put out, with his catalog including records that have bluegrass roots as well as some that are more experimental and some that are straight-up country. While that musical ambiguity has likely been a big part of Urban’s over two decades of hits, he shares that he felt he needed a change in his process when making the forthcoming album.

“My records can go in all kinds of musical places, like [my 2018 album] Graffiti U. There’s a lot of stuff on Graffiti U that I don’t know what genre it is or what style it is. Depending on the listener, you could call it diverse or completely scattershot,” Urban says. ” I thought if I gave myself a framework to work in that it might give me more focus musically, and it might give me more continuity on an album.

“What I discovered was that framework did give me continuity, but the continuity actually ended up sounding linear, so all the songs were a bit too much the same,” he explains. “Because I was touring at the time, I would come home from tour and record one song. Maybe a month later I’d record another one and then two weeks later I’d record another one. Each one individually felt and sounded really good, but when I put them together as an album and tried to sequence them, I realized I was missing all the other extra colors, adventurousness and spirit.”

So, with a collection of songs ready to be track listed, Urban called it off.

“I felt like I punched myself in the stomach,” he admits. “It would’ve been so much easier to say, ‘Look, there’s four really good songs on this album. You only need four good songs on an album. Let’s put it out, hit the road and keep the machine going.’ But I just couldn’t do it.”

The tracks that Urban couldn’t part with were “Messed Up As Me,” “Break The Chain,” “Daytona” and “Heart Like A Hometown.” With them, he started anew and took the guard rails off the creative process that has built his career. The first song Urban made after going back to the drawing board was “Chuck Taylors.” Written with Jerry Flowers, Chase McGill and Greg Wells, the unreleased tune exudes charisma with a fun ’80s feel.

“If that song is bristling with exuberant energy and excitement, it’s because I felt I’d released myself from this structure, and I was free to do whatever the hell I wanted to do. That song was so liberating,” Urban says. “The very next day we wrote ‘Straight Line.’ I felt like I had just been let out of a cage.”

Balancing unleashed creativity and being a hit artist with a business to maintain can be a difficult tightrope to walk. With his recent introspection on his album-making process, he has found there’s only one way to balance it.

“Following the muse,” Urban notes. “That might sound hippie-dippie to a lot of people, but it has never let me down. It may not be the result I was expecting, but in the long run, I’ve never been let down by following and trusting my muse.

“The only time it’s ever gone awry is when I’m [too focused on] doing it a certain way, and then it doesn’t seem to flow. The music has to tell me where to go. If I could have talked to those four songs that I took off 615, I would have said, ‘You guys seem to be really clear on where I should go. What songs would you like around you on the album?’ They would have said, ‘You already know. Just get in the studio and start playing.'”

With that in mind, he crafted eight more tracks that paint a complete picture of the muse he followed. Urban has released a handful of the tunes, including the buoyant “Straight Line,” the tormented “Messed Up As Me,” the rollicking “Wildside” and the endearing “Heart Like A Hometown” as well as the groovy collaboration with Lainey Wilson “Go Home W U.”

As for the unreleased tracks, his fans should know that they are worth the wait, as the much-anticipated project is some of his best work yet.

“615 felt like a lot of songs. This one feels like a bigger excavation and capturing of my life,” Urban sums. “I’m excited for people to hear it.”

His next studio album, High, is set for release on Sept. 20 via Capitol Records Nashville.

LB Cantrell
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