Keith Urban
In the four years since the release of Keith Urban‘s last studio album, The Speed of Now Part 1, the four-time Grammy winner has had quite a journey chasing down the muse for his 13th studio project.
The muse proved elusive this time around, with Urban even scrapping the makings of an album in 2022. But today (Sept. 20), the hitmaker has proudly released a 12-song opus of wildly-creative and full-hearted music. He titled the project High because of the euphoria he felt in the creative process that resulted in the 40-minute collection, but another meaning could be assigned to the caliber of what he’s created.
The record kicks off with the 12-second sound of an alarm clock on a track called “Blue Sky.” Urban is heard waking up, saying, “just give me some blue sky… please.” Track two, “Straight Line” (Urban, Chase McGill, Greg Wells, Jerry Flowers), immediately starts up next with it’s jovial banjo-picking, lively production and message about escaping the monotony of life.
“I really wanted to open the album with ‘Straight Line.’ There’s an intentional musical familiarity about that song when it comes to me and my sound,” Urban tells MusicRow. “It felt very comfortable to me, so it wasn’t surprising that lyrics leapt out about being in the moment and not missing out on life despite responsibility, commitments and obligations draining some of the color out of it.
“When we got into mixing, we experimented with different ways to open the song. I remember thinking maybe we should set up what the song’s meant to do,” he adds. “I asked myself, ‘What’s the kind of song that you hope would come on your alarm clark radio in the morning? It might be the first thing that makes you feel motivated and good.'”
Thus, Urban invites listeners into a place where they can be fully present with the rest of the album. He cuts deep right away with outside song “Messed Up As Me” (Jessie Jo Dillon, Shane McAnally, Michael Lotten, Rodney Clawson), which is the album’s current single.
The stirring track shares the all-too-familiar feeling of yearning for an ex whose no good for you. Urban was hooked by it on first listen.
“When I heard ‘when I get blue, I get dark blue,‘ I was in. With the next line, ‘when I have one, I always have a few’—I know that life extremely well,” he shares. “I can still feel that way metaphorically about things in my life.”
Notably, “Messed Up As Me” has some intriguing cover art, featuring of a birds-eye-view of a couple, naked, gripping each other for dear life in the bed of a pickup truck. According to Urban, the single rollout images for the album were a fun point of creativity.
“I wanted to find photographs that didn’t say anything using words, just an image that conjures up your own interpretation,” he says. “For ‘Messed Up As Me,’ my Creative Director, Patrick Tracy, found this image from a 1970s Japanese Playboy Magazine cover. It was these naked people in a pickup truck on a freeway. I just loved it.”
Another piece of media, the 2003 film School of Rock, loosely inspired a fun track on the album “Wildside” (Urban, David Garcia, Ashley Gorley, Ernest).
“Prior to my wife, I dated a lot of people and lots of them were these very southern, very Christian, well-raised girls that had this other side to them,” Urban says with a laugh. “That’s always stayed with me—this other side of these girls that is unleashed on a Friday or Saturday night. Monday, they’re right back to being professional, focused, responsible and diligent, and you never know. That, blended with Joan Cusack‘s character on School of Rock, manifested that song.”
On the album’s only collaboration, “Go Home W U,” Urban brings in fellow country superstar Lainey Wilson to duet about a wild night with a flickering flame. The song wasn’t originally meant to be a duet, though.
“I wrote that with Breland, Sam Sumser and Sean Small in 2020 when we had nowhere to go and nothing to do. On the demo, I sang both verses,” he says. “I had Lainey in my mind for a long time trying to find something to do with her. A friend of mine, Dan McCarroll, said, ‘What about that ‘Go Home W U’ song? Could you make that a duet?’ I sent her the song, she loved it and it was done.”
A stand-out on High is Urban’s ’80s-inspired jam “Chuck Taylors” (Urban, McGill, Flowers, Wells).
“Chuck Taylors” was the song that revitalized Urban as he transitioned from his scrapped album, and its energy shows it. He set up a write with Wells, with whom he crafted his 2016 hit “Wasted Time,” and close collaborator Flowers, who suggested they bring in McGill, an at-the-time new hit songwriter on Music Row.
“I was driving to the studio in Berry Hill and was thinking, ‘God, I don’t have any ideas. I don’t know who this Chase McGill guy is, and I get nervous writing with people I don’t know,'” Urban recalls. “In my head, I heard this simple chord progression and sort of punk, flailing bass. I got the whole chorus down but with zero lyrics—I had no idea what the song was about, but I was very adamant that the melody was right.
“I showed up with that and Chase says, ‘I’ve got this idea for a song called ‘Chuck Taylors.’ I’ll just read you what I’ve got,'” Urban says. “As he read it, I’m hearing this melody in my head. I picked up the bass, sang my melody and as I was looking at the words, they just fit. It was insane. Those words were just waiting for that melody.”
On another stand-out, “Daytona,” Urban taps into that old familiar ache for summer love. Written by Nathan Barlowe and Steven Lee Olsen, the tune has had a long road to the track list.
“Steven Lee and Nathan wrote that song back in 2016 I believe. Nathan sent it to me in January of 2017 and I loved it immediately,” Urban says. “I recorded it and tried to put it on the Graffiti U record,. I just didn’t feel like it fit with everything and I had to give them the sad news that I was leaving it off. In 2020, when I was making The Speed of Now, it didn’t quite fit on that record either. Four years later, it finally found its way onto an album.”
Urban brings to the surface a universal truth with the song “Love Is Hard.” Written by Shane McAnally, Justin Tranter and Eren Cannata, the track has tender, somewhat melancholy verses with an emotional, rocking chorus, featuring an angsty vocal from Urban that compliments the song well.
“There’s an emo, middle-finger rawness to the chorus because that’s exactly what it’s like. The verses have a quiet, sensitive intimacy,” he says. “Shane texted me that song when were almost done with the album. I was driving and barely got through the first chorus before I called him back.”
High closes with an extremely-profound song about generational trauma. Written with Marc Scibilia, “Break The Chain” finds Urban at his most vulnerable, examining what he’s inherited and what he wants to take forward.
Notably, the song was the result of Urban and Scibilia’s first meeting, arranged by Troy Tomlinson.
“I walked in to his studio and as I’m saying hi to him, I looked down and saw this guitar that I’ve never seen before. It was a really old acoustic, but it had a rubber bridge and flat round strings. I picked it up and start playing this riff. He grabbed a mic and hit record. We had literally said nothing except hi to each other.
“The lyrics just started coming. I grabbed a legal pad and sat on his couch. I had no idea what I was writing about, things were just coming out that seemed to be about working through coming from an alcoholic family,” Urban recalls, sharing that his father passed in 2016 from alcoholism and he himself has been sober for 18 years.
“I just burst out crying, sitting on this guy’s couch. Marc looks over at me and all he said was ‘Hmm. Must be true.’ Then he went right back to work again. His reaction was perfect because it was supportive but it let me stay where I was. It was so beautiful.”
Between the depth of feelings of generational trauma, fragmented love and toxic codependency, and the jubulent feelings of escapism, burning intimacy and good times with friends, Urban’s High is an exceptional collection.
To sum, Urban shares, “This one feels like a bigger excavation and capturing of my life. I hope it’s loved.”
