Keith Urban on His New Album, ‘High,’ Why Performing at a Gas Station Is as Much Fun as an Arena, and Curing the Blues With ‘Whistling in the Dark’ Songs

Chris Willman
·24-min read

Keith Urban’s new album is titled “High,” and there’s a reason you probably won’t ever find him releasing one called “Low” (besides the fact that David Bowie already took that) — the country-pop superstar is known for his buoyant material. In an interview with Variety, he explores where that comes from with him, including the fact that he can get the blues as much as anybody, but some of these upbeat songs are emotionally aspirational tunes… “whistling in the dark” numbers, as he calls them.

In fact, Urban did originally an entire album that was in a reflective mood just prior to this one, which was to have been titled “615,” but upon its completion a year and a half ago, he felt it really didn’t reflect the full spectrum of moods he likes to pull off in a concert setting. So he mostly went back to the drawing board, keeping what he felt were the four best ballads from that project — including “Break the Chain,” a candid number that deals with his relationship with his alcoholic father — but then bolstered them with eight more songs he knew would show off his more galvanizing side, like “Straight Line” and “Wildside.” Although he’s not afraid to refer to some of these barnburner-style songs as “cheeseburgers,” he spoke in our interview about why he needs these upbeat tracks, as much as the audience does.

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Urban won’t tour until 2025, but audiences can catch him in the meantime at a residency at the Fountainebleau in Las Vegas on Oct. 4-5, 9 and 11-12, as well as February 14-15, 19 and 21-22. Or maybe if you’re in the right place you’ll see him playing for a few dozen people at an airport bar, 6,000 people at a rural gas station or 25,000 on a closed-down Nashville boulevard — no one loves a pop-up show quite as much as Keith Urban.

On your new album, you have just one featured artist, with Lainey Wilson singing on “Go Home W U.” If there’s anybody in country right now who ticks every possible box for what you could want in a duet partner, it’s her.

I heard Lainey’s voice a few years ago, I think before she put anything out. I hadn’t even seen her. I heard her voice before I saw her, and it’s one of those voices where I just went, “Oh, this is like a classic. This is a classic and modern all at the same time.” And I could hear our voices together if I could find the right song. It turned out to be this song that actually had been sitting around since 2020, actually written during quarantine — one of those classic frustration songs. Can’t go out to bars and hang out with friends, so we’ll just write about it.

With the song “Wildside,” you’ve mentioned that there was some sort of “School of Rock” inspiration there, specifically in the Joan Cusack character.

Did you see that movie? I’m sure you did. It’s such a great scene in the movie that just stayed with me. I’ve always liked Joan Cusack anyway, but she was particularly good in that role of playing this incredibly straightlaced, rigid sort of “ma’am” type with no edge, no danger, no nothing. And yet leave the Jack Black (school scenario), get some tequila into her, and she’s up from the table singing “Edge of Seventeen.” I just thought that was a great transformation that’s so relatable. I had the title of “Wildside” and just knew that I wanted to write about that undercurrent personality that’s in a lot of people.

This album definitely has its party songs on it. It seems like maybe that was partly in reaction to an earlier version of the album you have discussed having recorded, which you let go of because it was too earnest across the board. This one has its earnest moments, certainly. But with that previous version of the album, did you just feel like the material was gravitating that too much that way, before you decided you needed to reconfigure?

Yeah. The truth of it is, my records have always sort of had a mix of things, even in the genres that sort of made their way onto my records in various ways. And starting, I think, from when I made “Graffiti U” particularly, I was starting to think: “Am I just becoming too scattershot in the way in the songs I write and how I record them? … Is it just a fine line between diversity on a record and being scattershot and lacking cohesiveness? I’m not sure where I’m at with that.” And so I thought, “Well, maybe I should apply a bit more of a framework. Whenever I make an album, I’ll be more focused and specific. I’ll use one producer like I used to do. It’ll be Dann Huff and we’ll do the whole album and they’ll all be songs of a particular feel and sound. I’ll call the album ‘615’ and it’ll be my Nashville album. This is what I need. I need discipline and framework that’ll keep me focused.” And the end result was 13 songs that sounded like they stayed in one place the whole time.

I mean, the four songs I took from that (abandoned) record were “Messed Up as Me,” “Heart Like a Hometown,” “Daytona” and “Break the Chain.” And if you put those four songs together, you would go, “Oh yeah,  those are great— but I don’t know if I want 13 songs all like this.” So it was a failed attempt at changing the way I make records. And what I learned was, I just make ‘em the way I make ‘em.

It can be a good thing for an artist to lock into a certain vibe for a whole album, but also, most people only realistically get a shot at releasing a new album every so often. So if you’re ignoring some part of yourself to lock into that vibe, then it’s like, “Oh, now I’ve gotta wait four years till I give people this other type of song.”

That’s right. And also, I love playing live. And there weren’t a whole bunch of great live-energy songs in that 13-song set that I’d put together, and I didn’t want to go out and tour those songs. So to some degree it was almost like, “My album’s gonna be like a set list. What song do I want to open with?” And I went, “I don’t have it. I would like it to be something kind of bristling, uptempo, super-hypnotic and easy to latch onto.” So we went and wrote “Straight Line.” It was like I wrote to what I needed, and I needed a song to come barreling out of the gate. So we wrote “Straight Line,” and then “Messed Up as Me” worked after it. And then we wrote “Wildside,” and that worked gangbusters. It was just writing an album of the ups and downs and highs and lows and all that energy mix that I wanted on an album.

They’re not all necessarily designed as rabble-rousers, but a a lot of them are. And as much as you want reflective songs, it’s apparent that, when you’re thinking about going out there, you still get a charge after all these years out of actually exciting people.

Yeah. And I love having those other songs too — the gravitas, reflective, meaningful, saying-something songs. But I felt like I had almost a whole album full of that. And so I needed a few cheeseburgers in there.

“Break the Chain,” the album-closer, is one of the four pretty serious songs you carried over from the first incarnation of the album. I saw an interview you did with Apple where you talked about crying while you were writing that song, even while you were showing the lyrics to one of your collaborators, when you got to a poignant part that was about your dad…

Yep. I was sitting on a couch just like that, with a yellow legal pad, because I like to write with pen — because I like to, if I cross something out, I may come back to it. So I don’t want to hit delete. So I like writing with pen. So even if I cross it out, I can still read it and it may actually be right. It just wasn’t right there — that kind of thing.

That’s interesting. Those of us who are writers of any sort should maybe take note.

So I write, write, write, write… and I got to what ended up being the second verse, and got this bit about my dad. Just sitting on this couch, I just burst out crying in this complete stranger’s house. And he’s over working on his laptop, building the track and shaping a few things, and he literally just looks over at me and goes, “Hmm. Must be true.” And then he went back to work again — like, no opinion, which was perfect. It was just an observational comment, and right back into work. That was great, because it let me stay in it. You know, it wasn’t like, “Oh my gosh, is everything OK?” That would’ve wrecked it for me.

“Break the Chain” seems to speak to a theme that probably a lot of people feel in their lives, if they’ve had at least a little therapy, which is the balance between finally fully understanding what’s happened to you in life, and then not totally being absorbed in that for the rest of your life, either, as a source of placing blame or absolving yourself of responsibility.

Yeah, taking the victim role, but never actually doing anything about it. And always sort of saying, “Well, if you knew where I came from, you’d understand why I’m so messed up.” And, you know, you do look at someone’s family of origin and you go, “Oh my God. No wonder — holy shit.” You know, these stories of your mom or your dad, or your brother or your high school teacher, whoever has just caused so much trauma and destruction in your childhood that you’ve now carried into adulthood, it’s not (your) fault that that happened.

But at some point, it’s my responsibility to do what I can to not keep carrying that on, particularly if I have a family. Am I gonna carry that trauma into that family? And I’m not saying any of this is easy to do; it’s really hard to do. It’s actually so hard to do that. A lot of people just cannot take it on.

And you hope that registers in some way, therapeutically, for people?

Something as simple as a song can be effective at the right time for all of us. You know? Driving alone in a car, or something in a song says something that you go, “Oh my God, I get it.”

I mean, this is the cheesiest thing, but there’s a Hall and Oates song, “Rich Girl,” which I’ve heard a million times. I was in the car one day and I’m like, “Oh, that’s such a great song…” And in the second verse, he goes, “It’s so easy to hurt others when you can’t feel pain.” It’s just like, oh my God, what a great, great lyric. I realized immediately: “Man, I’ve caused so much pain to people. I couldn’t feel it, and I hurt so many people because I couldn’t feel it.” And man, that’s a stout little bit of wisdom in a Hall and Oates song. Who knew? He sings it so beautifully that I didn’t actually listen to what he was saying. The melody is so good, and so I’ve missed that lyric most of my life.

On the total opposite of the scale from “Break the Chain,” you have a song called “Laughing All the Way to the Drank.”

Speaking of cheeseburgers, it’s a bit of levity that’s needed right about then.

It’s funny to me, because I think of things like Brad Paisley having songs like “Alcohol,” and then you find out he’s a teetotaler. And you’re known for being clean and sober, but…

I think there’s a difference between having never drunk and having drunk a shitload, to be able to write songs about ’em. … You know, I write about all kinds of stuff. It doesn’t have to be literally about my life today. But it can definitely be about my previous life — there’s plenty to draw from.

By that same token, people think of you as a stable guy in seemingly a stable relationship, but you can write songs like “Messed Up as Me.” And you enjoy writing some of those songs that are about relationships that are maybe not the sturdiest in the world.

Yeah. Well, (relationships are) hard. There’s a song on the album called “Love is Hard.” It’s really true, But it’s all a journey. I think the album is intended to capture some of that mix of dualities that a lot of us have.

I have a very responsible, diligent, grounded, focused, reliable side. And I have a sort of wild, animistic, reckless-abandon side to me as well. And it’s keeping those two in check, making sure that one doesn’t get too overwhelmed. Because even in something like “Straight Line,” which is seemingly simple — top down, hey, got my girl, off we go into the sunset — it’s just as much about myself, about making sure that I don’t lose a bit of edge and a bit of color in my life, if it starts to get a bit monotonous.

So the rambunctious side that you show off in a concert is not something that you stir up just for the sake of riling up an audience, but you really feel that within yourself.

Yeah, and I think it’s a pretty common feeling. People feel songs on different levels, and sometimes there’s some subtext going on in these songs. I’ve come to the realization… Over so much of my career so far, I’ve written so many sunny-disposition, uptempo, happy songs, you know? And I was like, why do I write so many songs like that? And I realized a lot of them have been whistling-in-the-dark songs for me. They’ve been songs to keep me buoyant and keep me positive and keep me moving. Because I haven’t been that, and I’ve needed a song to whistle in the dark a little bit, you know? So they’ve been very helpful for keeping me buoyant at times when I might otherwise have gone down a bit with the ship.

I thought, I have written a lot of these feel-good, happy, the world’s great, everything’s great (songs). (But) I can be my own shine blocker. I can get, in my life, a bit insecure and… not depressed, but I can definitely go through long periods of just feeling irritable and negative and dark. So I lean into those songs to just keep me moving. They’re very helpful to me.

You’ve had your share of sad songs too. But if anybody was going to have their first go-to for the opposite, it might be you, for those really rousing, happy songs. Which I think nobody does like you, but it’s actually hard to write those well, unless they’re coming out of some grounding.

I think so. Yeah. Most of them, I hope, are like: I would love to feel that way. So just imagine what it would be like to feel that way, and then write. That’s it.

You’re coming back to Las Vegas next month. You’ve been around previously,  right?

Yeah, this will be my third residency in a different venue since 2019.

Is there anything that you like about sort of digging in for a stint there?

It’s a great laboratory for me to see what works, to see what things come in those rooms to me as a stream-of-conscious performer. Because even though I’ve got a lot of structure, I also am riding on the edge of spontaneity, always. I would go insane if I had to do the exact songs in the exact order, to the exact arrangement. If I was playing to tracks, and everything was queued up in this massive production and you can’t move one little thing — you know, hit “start” and an hour and a half later hit “stop” and there’s the show — that sounds like an episode of “Severance” to me. I would just go insane.

So I’ve always gotta keep — not keep, just have — a sense of spontaneity and unpredictability at some point. Because if it’s not there, I’ll bust up and just do that at some point anyway. I’ll be like, “Ahhhh… this is just so I can feel it. I can feel what’s happening in the audience right now.” If it’s not exciting, I’ll make it exciting, whatever I’ve gotta do, just to break out of the monotony at any time that might appear.

So you are able to have a sense even within doing a show of, like, “This feels static and I’ve gotta mess it up somehow”?

Yeah — it probably comes down to: “I don’t believe this; I don’t believe what I’m doing right now. I did this last night and I know why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because it worked great last night.” Well, it worked great last night because it was spontaneous. It won’t work tonight if you don’t make it spontaneous.

There’s a Scottish comedian that I opened for when I was very young. His name’s Billy Connolly. And opening for a comedian of his brilliance was an amazing learning experience, because I’d sit on stage and watch him every night, and he’s telling pretty much the same stories. He’s on tour. He’s got his X amount of time, his hour-and-15-minute thing that he does, and he’s telling the same stories. But he would embellish them. He’d shorten ’em; he’d add little bits that’d evolve. Every night this thing evolved. It was never exactly the same. And I think to some degree I wanted to do that with songs. Not to where I would wreck them for the audience; I hate artists that make them unrecognizable because they’re bored with the song. But I think you can do it and add some other little bits here and there just a few little moments of spontaneity.

What are the moments like where that comes into play for you in a conert? Is it part of the soloing, or just something about your attitude or phrasing?

Intensity. You know, if I’m listening and I feel like the band’s just sonically becoming a bit linear right now, I’ll yell, “Break it down, bring it down right now.” And my band’s great, because they watch me and know that we’re just gonna change it up a little bit. If everybody’s in the moment and they’re present, the audience feels it. They don’t know why, but they feel it. They know something’s happening up there. And it is because it’s real.

You know, someone goes, “If you take off into the audience, running, that must have been planned.” It may not have been planned, or I might have gone off in a different area than I was expecting, in a different part of the song, and then going out there and having no idea where I’m gonna go when I get out there or what I’m gonna do.

And that’s the other point too. I can do the same thing I did the night before, but if I’m passionately loving it, then it works. If I were to just do it because they seem to like this, that would be the death of that moment working. I couldn’t do that just because I think the audience likes this. If I’m not loving it, it won’t work.

Are you doing a tour per se after Las Vegas?

Yeah, and if I had made this record when I thought I was making it, and turned in “High” back in February of ‘23, we would’ve been touring this year. That was the plan. So it was really heartbreaking to know that (the first iteration of the album) wasn’t the record. Because even though it was February of 23, I know if I say to my team “This isn’t the album,” it’s going to have this domino effect, and “I bet we end up touring in 2025” — and this was at the beginning of ‘23.

But making records takes a minute for me. To get ’em to sound flowing and kind of effortless takes a lot of work. What did Dolly Parton say — “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap”? Records are like that for me. They can take a long time to sound effortless. But I just knew. I called my manager and I’m like, “Let’s push the tour off to ‘25 and let’s make the right record.” And he said, “Well, what are you gonna do in ‘24?” And I go, “Well, do some festivals, and then let me promote the record. Spend most of the year playing some club shows and some freakish, weird little things.” Like, Buc-ee’s and the airport and quirky, quirky places to play and just some interesting things — I like to mix it up like that.

We saw the news about you showing up and performing at the Nashville airport, and you’ve been known for doing things like that — you did one of the very first drive-in gigs right near the start of lockdown during the pandemic in 2020. You’re shutting down Lower Broad in Nashville for an album relese show too.  You seem to enjoy pulling little surprises where it’s not expected…

… and not a music venue. Buc-ee’s gas station is so fun to play, because it’s a fricking gas station. It’s like, great, why not?

We don’t have that chain in California. Where was the Buc-ee’s performance?

That was in Alabama. They’re a Texas phenomena, but they had this place in Alabama that was about an hour or hour and a half from Nashville, and off we went and played there.

Those strange one-off shows obviously can get some publicity, but what is the appeal of those things for you?

I was using the analogy of the dog wagging the tail a lot when I was thinking about ’24 — that from a playing standpoint, the tail is the music business and all the other stuff, but the dog is the song, it’s the band, it’s the music, it’s the thing. And if the thing is healthy, if that band plays really well, with no tracks, no video, no bullshit… if you can actually really play, play your instrument, play really good songs, play ’em really well… then if the dog’s healthy, the tail is great and we’re in business and everything hums along nicely. But I started to feel like the tail was becoming lauded and everyone’s neglecting the dog, and it was like: Let’s get right back to the center. Let’s just play a little gig. Put my amp right behind me so I can feel my amp blasting my shin and the back of my legs, my calves. Let’s have the drummer right there and the audience right here, and let’s make sure that thing is really good and strong and healthy, and we’re not relying on all the other stuff.

I started to feel like everything was starting to get leaned on for the support to hold everything up — lots and lots of tracks and fancy video things and lighting cues and all this stuff. Doing things like the gas station, it’s had an amazing effect on simplifying a lot of things. We played a club show in Dallas the night before the iHeart Festival down there, as a three-piece or four-piece band. A lot of our songs like “Straight Line” have a lot of track support, because there’s a lot of things on the song that make it work. We didn’t have any of that (in the club setting), so Maggie had to figure out a mandolin part, I had to change my electric part, Jerry had to change the way he played bass, the drummer had to do a different thing on the high hat, to make this combination work.

The very next night we go to iHeart. I walk into the band soundcheck and it was this cacophony of shit coming off the stage. It was like 12 tracks of stuff and lots of players, and I’m just like, what the fuck is this wall of noise? We don’t need all that. We just played last night and it sounded better than this does. And I knew in that nanosecond — I went, “Ah, this is great. This is why we’re playing the clubs. Just to make sure that the truth is there.” We can add all that stuff, but we’ve become too dependent on it and it’s becoming too fake and too processed and too just bullshit. So it was time to just get back to the center.

You do have a lot of almost subliminal parts on your records. And sometimes you love actually pointing those out, like when you did this series of song breakdown videos that is on YouTube where you sit at the mixing board and explain some of the parts.There was a fun one you did for “Wildside,” where you talked about having a programmed synth part that was inspired by ZZ Top’s “Legs.” And when you split it off, you joke that it sounds like getting an MRI.

And they glue things together way more than you think. Rhythmically, when you pull ’em out (live), something else has to cover that part, because it’s part of the momentum. You can’t just delete it, because the song kind of collapses. It almost goes half-speed, to some degree. And as a listener, you’d be like, “That sounds weird. What happened?” So then you’ve gotta find another guy to replace that part, on the guitar or something else. … So my point is, I’m not against all the track support, but we shouldn’t be playing along supporting the track. It’s meant to be other way around. Just want to make sure the dog is good and the tail doesn’t wag it.

I think the audience has become so accustomed to assuming there is this trickery everywhere — and oftentimes they don’t mind it. But if you find a way to assure them it’s not all pre-programmed…

And there’s something about getting rid of every shred of it and no way to hide.  It’s like, I’m gonna actually prove to you that it’s real and there’s spontaneity. In the middle of a song, I will be slipping in some random cover… and I had people come to me at the meet-and-greet saying, “When do you think of those songs that you’re gonna slip into the thing?” And I go, “In the moment.” And they go, “Well, you’re not really doing that. I mean, you guys kind of nailed it.” And I go, “It just worked.”

And I said to myself: How do I prove to the audience that this is not bullshit? So I would say to people in the club, “Yell out some songs while we’re playing. Gimme a song title.” Someone would go, “Hotel California.” All right, let’s figure out how to put it into something. We’d put it in, and people ask. “Did you place that guy there?” I’m like, I didn’t place the fucking guy there! People just cannot believe things are real.

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