Keith Urban on New Album 'High', Writing About His Family Dynamic and Duet With Lainey Wilson: 'She Killed It'

As Keith Urban describes in writing “Break the Chain” — the raw, confessional song about stopping destructive generational patterns that closes his new album, High — provides tremendous insight into his creative process.

“I started playing this guitar like that [co-writer] Marc Scibilia had flat-wound strings and a rubber bridge in his studio and it just made this interesting sound,” he explains. “The opening riff was what I played, and I started singing those words and the song just came out. I had no intention of referring to any of my uploads and [having] an alcoholic father.”

Urban himself is, of course, the father of two daughters with his wife Nicole Kidman. “I don't know if my dad, who passed away a long time ago, would be okay with the song or not, but he would love that it's real and it's a move forward to try and do things differently. “, he offers. “I guess I'm still working on things I thought I was at peace with for a while.”

Urban surprised himself a few times by crafting his 11th studio set, out Sept. 20 via Capitol Records Nashville, including building the bones of the album from a rejected attempt at a concept album he'd called 615. “I tried to make a very different record, and that didn't work out, so I scrapped it and followed my muse and ended up with this album,” he says.

In February 2023, Urban introduced the 615 album to play for his team. “I thought they were going, 'Well done, Keith! Let's get these singles out, let's close this tour!”. And instead, it was just crickets,” he says. “And I said, 'Oh, OK, that's not the record.' I said to everyone, 'Let's push the tour to 2025 and go and finish a proper album.'

Urban, who earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in June, delivered a very different set — one that's the most diverse of his career, with songs crossing the line from the intensely personal aforementioned “Break the Chain” and “Heart Like a Hometown,” to the period-windowed “Straight Line,” Lainey Wilson's lovelorn duet “Go Home With U,” and the heartbreaking “Messed Up as Me,” which climbs to No. 19 with a bullet up Bulletin boardThis week's Country Airplay chart.

Bulletin board caught up with the multiple Grammy winner over the phone as he talked about the album, the state of country radio, why he sold his major recordings — and what he really thinks about the oversized albums so many artists are releasing these days. Urban, who has earned 20 career Country Airplay No. 1, begins a 10-show residency at the Fountainebleau in Las Vegas on October 4.

Why do you think? 615 didn't they come together?

Look, I've never had a record thing. I think I was trying to do something — and that's the death of everyone. I was trying to do something instead of letting it unfold. The only songs that felt like they really flowed were “Messed Up as Me”, “Daytona”, “Break the Chain” and “Heart Like a Hometown”. So I thought, “I'll just take those four and create a new batch of songs around them — because those songs are right, but now they need the counterpoint songs to make a cohesive album.”

You made a very deliberate effort during the sequence of this album to change the tempo from each song to the next. You did this at a time when people generally don't listen to albums from start to finish.

I don't! But sequencing is also my way of figuring out which songs I don't need on the record.

You'd like the fans to hear High all the way from start to finish?

I like that it can be played top down and be a good experience. If you want to take a long drive, it's only 40 minutes. But if you just want to put it on and let it go, I hope it gives you a very similar feeling to what it's like to come and see us in concert if we did a 40-minute set. We were coming out of the gate and then going to some other places — but hopefully it would always keep moving in a way that whatever the next song was would feel good, emotionally and energetically.

You finally landed on 11 tracks, which is short these days!

I was never a fan of the 25-35 song album. I'm like, “In 2024? Really?” It's just not my thing. I just wanted to make a strong, concise, cohesive record. And these 11 tracks felt like that to me.

[The super long album] it does no good in the long run. In a way, we're sneaking back into that problem we had with albums back in the day [where] There were only two good songs on a 10-song album and the rest were just filler and fans got bored of it. That's why when iTunes came along and said, “Hey, you can buy a song,” everybody said, “Hallelujah.” We came full circle again doing this kind of manipulation of the system with 30 songs. If every one of them is fantastic, great — but it's not. There's no way it could be. It is impossible.

This is your 11^u studio album. What do you know about making albums now that you didn't before? [Urban breaks out into laughter.] Well, maybe given the experience with 615not a great question.

It's also a confirmation of the way I prefer to make records, which is a much greater mix of laid-back fun and spontaneity. I don't mean that there is no work, because obviously there is a huge amount of work. But almost every record I've made has a certain flow to them. The balance that most of my albums have had is a mix of introspection, heavy moments, and musicality, and then just some loose, goofy fun. And balancing those two worlds has always been my preferred way of making records. 615 it didn't have the fun factor in there. It was pretty serious.

There are plenty of songs here about drinking and drinking to excess, including the downright laid-back “Laughing All the Way to the Drank.” As a person in recovery for a long time, do you ever have a pause because you don't want to send a message with the drink?

At all. Regardless of my recovery journey, I'm just the guy I've always been in my spirit and my edge and my devilishness, whatever you want to call it. All that happened playing the clubs in Australia and then paying my dues here — it's all still a big part of who I am. And so now I sing these songs from those places.

“Confused like me”, I know exactly who this guy is. “Laughing All Way to the Drank”, I know exactly who this guy is. But in many of these cases, I also sing to people in the audience. I see this guy in the audience every night. He doesn't seem to have much, but he seems to be the guy having the best time and he's a hard working guy from Monday to Friday. He's my dad. My dad woke up at 6am and had been drinking all night before. So these songs are all places, people I know. They're real songs in that sense, every single one of them.

You and Lainey Wilson duet on “Go Home With U,” which you co-wrote with your friend Breland. How did this come about?

I wrote this song with Breland, Sam Sumser, and Sean Small in 2020. This is one of those quarantine-type songs where everything shut down and we really missed being in a full club with your friends and the music and fun, fun, fun. It was never written as a duet, but then I wanted to find something to do with Lainey — because I just knew our voices would sound good together. She liked it and sang the second verse and sent it back to me. He sent a bunch of picks, because he had to change the tune to fit its key, and then he just did some ad lib bits and pieces. I just sifted through it all and cut and processed it. He just killed it.

What about a full length album by you two?

I would do it. She is so much fun.

In December 2022, you sold your major recordings to Litmus Music, including 10 studio albums and a greatest hits collection. Why?

Timing was good. I really liked it [co-founders] Dan McCarroll and Hank Forsyth at Litmus, and I felt good about where it was going. So [it] surely it wasn't just to sell it—”Ka-Ching!” I wanted to feel good about where it was going and that I could stay active. I've continued to engage with all of these teachers — and, hopefully, we will as we move forward.

I kept all my publications as an author. I always remember Willie Nelson's famous story about selling “Crazy” for $50 and Willie's attitude was “I needed $50 and I got it, so I was happy.” There's something wonderful about that, just keep it in perspective.

Country fans are now streaming at a much higher rate than in the past, and country radio isn't the only way for fans to discover music. How has your relationship with radio changed?

I think radio is still very important because, at the end of the day, they're all ways for our audience to discover our music. And one of the beautiful things about radio that's still around is that you just have that stream of songs, so you have it in your car or your workplace, your house, wherever, and you have that stream transition.

I love the fact that radio is still a thing and that it's still as strong as it is. There are a huge number of people who have yet to turn on the tap to stream. There are many people who do it all. It's not necessarily either/or and most certainly my audience is a mixture of all of these. I have longstanding relationships with a lot of radio people and I'm really grateful for that.