The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Get fired up for the big Keith Urban show at Blossom Music Center
Keith Urban’s creative fuse keeps burning, 10 albums in
Standing still is not something Keith Urban does well — creatively or physically, with his energetic live performances.
Sure, the Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist has scored 17 No. 1 country hits and won multiple Academy of Country Music, Country Music Association and CMT Music awards. But in recent years — starting with 2013’s “Fuse” album and continuing through 2016’s “Ripcord” and on this year’s “Graffiti U” — Urban has been pushing the envelope of not only what it means to be Keith Urban but also what a country artist can do.
“Everything’s fair game in my world,” Urban, 50, says in a dressing room at the Austin (Texas) Convention Center after sitting for a keynote Q&A during this year’s South By Southwest Music + Media Conference. He still has plenty of reverence for his musical forebears, but, Urban reveals, “I probably listen to new music far more than anything else. I’m more intrigued and compelled and inspired by new music. For me, this is a really fascinating time as music goes into a broader conversation of what qualifies as music, and musicians, these days.”
In other words, Urban is well aware of the EDM and hip-hop worlds and music that’s made a decidedly different way than he’s used to.
“I’m a big believer that it’s all musicianship,” Urban ex- plains. “If you’re doing it on your MacBook Pro, even if you’re not playing an instrument, you still have to compose these things like a painter, putting things together in a way that makes a compelling image. That to me is as valid as a guy playing guitar and drums. I don’t discard that, like certain people do. I think that would be wrong.
“And I like to collaborate with people that don’t really play instruments. It’s so liberating....”
Those open vistas have become the hallmark of Urban’s recent career. Starting with “Fuse,” Urban has moved from tra- ditional methods into the world of multiple producers, including pop hitmakers such as Benny Blanco, Mike Elizondo, Stargate, Jeff Bhasker, busbee, J.R. Rotem and others — even a collaboration with Chic’s Nile Rodgers on “Ripcord.”
The risks have been rewarded. “Fuse” and “Ripcord” both went platinum at a time when albums are hard-pressed to do so, and launched hits such as “Cop Car,” “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” “We Were Us” with Miranda Lambert and “The Fighter” with Carrie Underwood.” “Graffiti U,” meanwhile, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and gave Urban his sixth No. 1 album on the country charts.
“It’s happened very organically,” Urban says of the collaborations. “I think it’s more intuitive, what I do. I don’t overthink it. I just sort of flow towards people that I’m interested in as songwriters, musicians, producers, collaborators (in) all sorts of genres, reaching out to people who have worked on something I really liked. It’s like, why go work with a guy who can play like Nile Rodgers? Go get the real thing.
“It keeps it fresh and vibrant, I think. It keeps it very present.”
Engaging contemporary pop figures did come with a bit of preconception, however.
“A few years back there was this L.A. producer, who I work with a bit now, on our first record I said to him, ‘Man, just give me some beats,’ ‘cause he had done some work with Eminem,” Urban recalls. “So he played me a bunch of beats and I was like, ‘OK, OK, OK — now play me something like I’m NOT from Nashville’ and he’s like, ‘‘Oh! OK...’ and the whole thing changed.
“It’s instinctive. They want to make a country song and I want to make a song like they do. But we get there in the end.”
“Graffiti U,” Urban’s 10th studio album, also benefitted from a new home studio he built “not too long ago” at the Nashville home he shares with wife Nicole Kidman and their children.
“I really lived in it during a lot of this album,” he said. “I always have loved being in the studio, but I’ve been able to indulge in that a lot more than in the past by having it at our house. I get to really explore things I hear in my head, trying to get those out in the studio. I just love it.”
Urban got a bit of a head start on “Graffiti U” with “Female,” a single inspired by last year’s #metoo movement that he released initially as a standalone single. The album’s first single, “Coming Home,” meanwhile, finds him teaming up with Rotem and co-writer/ duet partner Julia Michaels — as well as the late Merle Haggard via a sample of his 1968 hit “Mama Tried.”
“I’ve had this idea to use certain samples from famous country songs to try to write something new from it,” Urban explains. “I don’t want to sort of gratuitously shove a sample into a song where it didn’t flow, but I did want to try to use something to create something new, and I always loved the intro of ‘Mama Tried,’ the rolling guitar and the (Fender) Telecaster line that’s well-known to country fans.”
Haggard receives a cowriting credit on the track, which has the blessing of Haggard’s widow, Theresa, and his son, Ben.
Urban has since gone on the road to promote “Graffiti U” — on Aug. 10, he’s at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls — and doesn’t feel at all tethered by his past successes. And he’s happy that his fans have largely gone along for the ride with him, even if Urban’s new music is a few steps away from the hits that made him famous nearly two decades ago.
“I think my core fans will know that at this point with me, who knows what it’s going to be,” Urban says with a smile. “I want people I listen to keep pushing at my musical boundaries, so I feel I might be able to do that for my audience, as well.
“A gentle moving of the center is really what it is, so at some point you look back at where you were and go, ‘Omigosh. Wow. I’ve moved a long way from there,’ and you don’t realize it ‘cause it’s just being very slow and steady. It’s just always moving, hopefully. That’s what I’m after.”