Keith Urban Shares Insight into the Making of His New Album, ‘High’

Keith Urban’s new album, High, is a perfect reflection of his upbringing, who he is today and the kind of artist he strives to be. It has taken the Australian country singer four years to put out his latest album as it evolved from a previous project that he began working on in 2022 called 615 which he later scrapped. Although this collection didn’t come to fruition, Urban revealed he kept four of the 13 tracks – “Messed Up as Me,” “Daytona,” “Heart Like a Hometown”, and “Break the Chain.” With these songs, he started over, writing and recording for another year and a half until he finally created a new album that gave him that sound and depth he was looking for initially. 

“In all the albums I’ve ever made, I’ve never scrapped an entire album and started again. So it felt like a gut punch of my own making. It would have been easier to just be like, this album’s fine. There’re some great songs on it. Let’s go, let’s tour, let’s keep the thing going, but every part of me just felt like there’s a better record in me,” Urban recently told Country Now and other outlets. 

He continued, “The ‘615,’ I did it intentionally with this kind of framework idea of what the songs might be, how they would be done, and it would give me focus for an album and what I discovered was what I thought would give me focus, gave me limitations. The record was lacking some of the more musical adventures that I like on an album and so I shook off that title, that album, that concept, everything, and went, I’m just going to go to the studio with a bunch of buddies and we’re just going to have a blast and see what happens.”

The Idea Behind “Blue Sky” Intro Track

This writing session led to the creation of the tracks “Chuck Taylors” and “Straight Line,” two songs that offer a large expression of energy that finds Urban feeling as though he’d been released into the wild. 

Before he dives into the free spirit and authenticity of this record with songs like “Wildside,” “Dodge In A Silverado,” “Laughin’ All The Way To The Drank,” and more, listeners are eased into the first track, “Straight Line,” with an intro dubbed, “Blue Sky.” The 12-second sound bite opens with the annoying beeping of an alarm clock followed by rumblings from Urban who clearly has no desire to get up for the day. He is heard slamming the clock and saying “‘just give me some blue sky, please” and then suddenly the mood shifts with the upbeat banjo plucks of “Straight Line.” 

“We were mixing ‘Straight Line’ and I wanted to start the album with it, but it felt abrupt just starting,” he explained. “We messed around with various ways that instruments crept in, or this happened, or static, or they’re like a radio dial. We tried all these things to give it something interesting and then…my mix engineer, Sean Moffitt, said, ‘Why do you want it to open the album?’ I said, ‘Well, because it’s like a burst of blue sky and sunshine when you just need to feel alive again. It’s a song to make you feel alive again. Like, the first song that comes on the radio in the morning, when you wake up, if it’s a really upbeat, good song, you feel good. Even though you hate that you’ve got to get up and go to work, at least the song makes you feel good.”

Opening Up About His Upbringing

“Straight Line” was one of the songs that gave fans an early glimpse into the project, alongside “Messed Up As Me,” “Wildside,” “Go Home W U” feat. Lainey Wilson, and “Heart Like A Hometown.” While the album as a whole offers a variety of emotions and themes throughout the 12 tracks, there are a few that stand out as they each resonate with Urban’s family and upbringing in some way. 

“Heart Like A Hometown” is one that Urban says he “really loved” when it was first recorded. The song finds him reflecting on his days as a child and having to find his metaphoric “home” in his family and his guitar as his parents moved around a lot when he was young. Later on in life, he found a new home in the city of Nashville and its strong community of music lovers. This beautiful song captures the sense of comfort he’s found in various aspects of his life, despite not being rooted in one place.

“’Heart Like a Hometown,’ I think, is the kind of a song that it could be literal, or the hometown could be somebody, but someplace that you can always go back to when you get lost. It’s a little bit like ‘The House That Built Me.’ You want to have that place where you can recenter and remember who you are, then you can go back out in the world again. I love those kinds of songs.”

“Break The Chain”

Before the album was even finished, Urban says he knew he was going to end on the track, “Break The Chain” because it came out of a very personal experience and he knew it was time for this story to be shared. The raw recording of Urban depicting his story of being raised in an alcoholic family and how that has impacted his life is what listeners hear today. It captures the tears flowing out of him as he was writing the lyrics, and his strong desire to do things differently. 

“The truth about the song is that I was born in an alcoholic family, my dad was alcoholic and my journey is being raised in that family and whatever that carries with it as I go into adulthood and I would never in a million years have thought I’m still dealing with that or still dealing with it, processing it, still reconciling with my father, who’s long since passed away, never got sober,” he explained. “I would never have thought that I wanted to sing about or needed to sing about that or write about that, but that song wanted to come.”

Landing On “High” As The Title

When searching for a title to sum up this entire collection, Urban found a word that was a common thread throughout, and that was “High.” He keeps the tradition going of never naming an album after a song title and instead, choosing a title that can have different interpretations for each listener. 

“I wanted a good, strong, simple word that captured the energy and the spirit of the record.  And that word, I started hearing it in all these songs. In ‘Straight Line’ it says, ‘Remember when this kind of high was us, babe.’ ‘Daytona’ says, ‘Trying to find new highs, but I can’t fight that neon Florida sky. ‘Laughin’ All The Way to the Drink’ says, ‘I’m on a Friday high cause I just got paid.’ So it kept happening all through the record and I thought, well, the one thing we agree on is the destination. That’s where we all want to go to or get to and how we get there is individual. That’s different for every one of us, how we get there, but we do want to get there. And I thought, well, that’s it. That’s what this record is. It’s high.”

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He has expressed genuine gratitude for how far he’s come, the music he gets to make, his health, and the people who have guided him along the way, and those strong emotions are felt throughout this record in a variety of different ways. 

“I genuinely have gratitude for what I get to do. That’s not BS. It’s real. And if that came through on this record, then that’s what you’re feeling.”

Surprise Pop-Up Show In Nashville Welcomes 25,000 Fans

On the eve of the album release, Keith Urban celebrated with a surprise pop-up show in Nashville that shut down Lower Broadway with 25,000 people in attendance. He announced the free performance to Instagram just hours before he was set to take the stage. The night also included a pop-up merch store and Barstool Nashville, where a limited amount of vinyls with signed posters were available.

“I love free stuff…do you? I love giving…do you love getting? Then we’re gonna get along GREAT. TONIGHT…SEE YOU SOON,” he wrote on his Instagram story.

This concert marked just one of many pop-up shows that Urban has put on in recent months in intimate venues across Dallas, Chicago, Minneapolis, Nashville’s BNA Airport, Sydney, Brisbane, and a Buc-ee’s parking lot in Alabama. For nearly 90 minutes, he took the stage and gave Music City a show to remember as he delivered first-time performances of songs from HIGH, which is officially out now.

Tomorrow night, Keith Urban will perform live in Las Vegas at the iHeart Festival, which airs live on Hulu. He will then head to New York to appear on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Sept. 24 and “The Kelly Clarkson Show” on Sept. 26. Beginning October 4, he will launch Keith Urban’s High in Vegas, a run of 10 exclusive performances at Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Additional shows are scheduled for October 5, 9, 11-12, and February 2025 on February 14-15, 19, 21-22.