On the heels of releasing his 11th album, Keith Urban gives GRAMMY.com an honest look inside his approach to making country music and how it played into his latest release.
"Article published in Grammy.com. Author: Alison Bonaguro.
When Keith Urban announced his 11th studio album in June, he revealed that it wasn't initially called HIGH. In fact, it wasn't even the album he was hoping to create. So he scrapped all but four songs and started over.
The problem with that album — which was called 615, named for the Nashville area code — was that it was missing something: him.
Going into the studio with an open mind and a free spirit, Urban created an album that is, as he said in his album announcement, "so much more of what I actually wanted to say." As a result, HIGH captures who Urban is as a prolific songwriter, navigating everything from unbridled light-heartedness to poignant heartbreak.
The four-time GRAMMY winner co-penned half the songs on HIGH, and produced all 12 along with some of Nashville's finest writers and producers, including his longtime collaborator Dann Huff. The result is 40 minutes of Urban's heart and soul, and everything in between.
In celebration of HIGH's release, Urban sat down with GRAMMY.com to reflect on how the past two decades have shaped the way he makes music, feels music and plays music — and how it all led to his latest masterpiece.
You've said before that making and playing music makes you euphoric. Is there a secret to maintaining that kind of high after nearly three decades of making country music?
It's my curiosity and passion that just burns very intensely. The center of me, my spirit, feels no different now than when I arrived in Nashville. Literally no different. In a strange way in the sense that I often forget that I've done anything. So I sort of feel like I haven't accomplished anything. But the real plus side of that is that I'm not encumbered by it in any way. It doesn't weigh on me.
Is that high as intense as it was when you made your 1999 debut album in America?
It is, because when it came time to make my first album in Nashville, that was when I had a clear idea of writing songs and the way I wanted to make records.
That album was released almost exactly 25 years ago. And it gave you your first No. 1 at country radio, "But for the Grace of God." That really carved out a special place for you as a singer/songwriter.
Well, I'm obviously drawn to those themes because that's how I was raised with my mom and dad. We were a working-class family, we didn't have much of anything, but we had our family and we were very close. I never once felt like we were lacking anything.
So even on the new album, "LAUGHIN' ALL THE WAY TO THE DRANK" has that familiar theme of a guy that seems to not have anything, but he's kind of got it made, you know? It's literally recognizing that you don't need much to have a full life.
On a song like that, or any of the others on this anthology, do you ever have a gut feeling for which songs will soar to the top of the charts, win awards, or otherwise stand the test of time?
I can't even tell you how many years ago it was that I completely detached from what songs work, what songs connect, which ones don't, or how they do it. And even more so now, the definition of success is so individual. That's a good thing — that that definition now can have infinite meanings for an artist.
The success of the song, if it only barely cracked the top 50, and yet you meet somebody at a concert who says it completely saved them and changed their life, you would deem that song an incredible success. Those definitions are changing constantly.
That's a good thing, right?
It is. Because think about a song like Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer." It was on her Lover album, and it did nothing. But her fans really liked it. So about four years later, they released it as an official single. And then it was absolutely massive. It just hadn't been discovered yet.
A little bit like your "You Look Good in My Shirt."
Right? Seven years later! [Laughs.]
What was it about your never-released album 615 that made you want to start over on HIGH?
I've always made records one way, which is fairly loose. My producer Dann Huff can definitely testify to that being my favorite way to make an album: to just show up at the studio. And when I get to the studio, I'll decide what we're playing that day. It might not be the one we were planning on if I think, "I just don't feel that song today. How about this one? Can we give this a swing?"
So it's always about trying to do what I'm passionate and curious about, and what I'm loving and capturing that day. I've always made records that way. But I didn't do that when I made 615. Instead, it was a specific effort to try and capture certain kinds of songs and make a certain kind of album. It was more premeditated, and then the end result felt a bit linear. It was missing a bit of playful and adventurous spirit, and I knew I had that album in me.
Has that ever happened before?
Well, on some of my albums previously, I've wandered off in so many musical directions. I'd have some of my fans go, "I don't know where you're going with these songs." I felt like people were saying they never knew what to expect from my albums, but it didn't sound like a compliment. Then I felt like maybe I need more focus and discipline in my life and on my albums. And that's what I did on 615. I ended up with 13 songs that sounded focused and disciplined. But the edge, the curiosity and the exploring the edges were missing.
Not all fans want focus. Sometimes there is beauty in the ambiguity, how one song can mean ten different things to ten different people. I think that's where you shine.
Well, people wrestle with metaphors sometimes. When I hear "Wichita Lineman," I don't see Glen Campbell up on a pole fixing power lines. I hear a man who's lonely and missing somebody. Songs don't need to be so literal.
But then sometimes, there's no mistaking what a song is about. "MESSED UP AS ME" paints such a dark blue picture of lonely yearning, in both versions: the album cut and the stripped-down piano version. What made you take it from sad to worse?
When we were figuring out how we would play the song live, I sent it to my keyboard player. And somewhere along the line I heard just the keyboards and the vocal. And I went, "Oh. That's really good. That song holds up really well with just ethereal keys." That was the embryo discovery of that version.
A good song is a good song when the bones are good, just like on the Ariana Grande song "We Can't Be Friends" that I reworked.
Another song on HIGH that sounds like it hit home for you is "HEART LIKE A HOMETOWN," because you moved around so much as a kid. Now that you and your family have called Nashville home for so long, does a song like this anchor you?
The feeling that song evokes is really beautiful — when you're going out and pursuing your dreams, your passions and your interests that maybe go beyond your hometown. Maybe there is a person that you were leaving behind as well. It's like, "Which one do I choose? Which way do I go?"
But the beauty in that is how a hometown is there for you if you ever find yourself out there, lost, and want to come back. Your hometown says, "I am completely open. You can come back anytime." Nashville feels that way now, because I've lived in Nashville way longer than I lived in Australia, which is crazy.
"STRAIGHT LINE" is a little bit more reckless than that one, in the best way. Is there a person who is that straight line for you?
Some of these songs aren't about a relationship. They're almost looking-in-the-mirror songs. On this one, it's more of an interior conversation with two sides of myself. The dutiful grounded, responsible guy, and the wild, living-on-the-edge guy.
I'm trying to balance those two guys, but then maybe you've become a little too reliable, and you've lost a bit of your color and your edge. I write these songs historically in relationship form, but many of them are actually about the duality inside me.
And when it comes to producing the music, you seem to be casting a wider net these days than when it was just you and Dann Huff. What is your thinking behind that?
Almost exclusively, every outside producer that makes it onto my record is a songwriter on that track. I'm not out there tapping a whole bunch of different producers. I'm writing with people who also happen to be producers. There's an interesting thing in Nashville where there's a lot of track people who just do tracks. So I love it when I can write with really good writers who are also really good producers.
Pretty soon it will be time to take all these songs on the road. Or, more specifically, to Las Vegas, when you start your Fontainebleau residency on Oct. 4. Will that change the way you take the stage each night?
It's interesting how many similarities there are between a residency and a traditional tour. I've been asked to do residencies in Vegas for many years before I actually did one. I would always say no. It just sounded like an episode of "Severance." It was like, "It's just gonna be this place over and over and over?"
I couldn't stand the thought of something that resembled a day job, you know? That was exactly what we don't want to be doing. But now, I can see that the audience is different every night.
Can you give those shows a sense of the lively camaraderie of playing in bars, when you were just getting started?
Definitely. It's a spirit of intent. That's how I approach what I do when I go on stage. It really doesn't have anything to do with where we are. I'm gonna get up on stage and do exactly what I do, which is to get everybody to come together and forget about their lives for the whole time. We're gonna find everything in common, have a great time, and live in this other existence for a little bit.
And I always want to play with the audience, not at them. I need their participation. I need a huge amount of complete spontaneity and unpredictability. None of that changes, even in a big Vegas setting.
My shows are structured so I have threads all throughout where songs can get extended or shortened. I can make a quarterback call and throw a song in right here, spontaneously.
For as long as you've been in Nashville, you've been such a genuine champion of other country artists, both your peers and the genre's newcomers. That's rare, and it has shown itself on this album with the collaborations you've done this time around, with Lainey Wilson and ERNEST. How do you decide which country artists you want to work with?
It's always because of who I feel a connection with. I don't look at their streaming numbers. I don't think about anything other than artistic compatibility. So when I read an interview about BRELAND many, many years ago, I thought, "This is a kindred spirit artistically and creatively. I'd like to see what we could do." And then with ERNEST, he is just another kindred spirit.
And with Lainey Wilson, when I heard her voice, it was within seconds that I thought, "I feel like I know who this girl is." And I hadn't even met her. But her voice tells me that I know who she is — she is grounded, down-to-earth and just the real deal.
Our song "GO HOME W U" might be one of those songs that has its own trajectory and journey and timeframe. It's not time sensitive, it's just about going out drinking and being flirtatious in a song. And that's timeless!
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