Keith Urban isn’t the type to blow up his own plans. The man’s made eleven albums without ever hitting the eject button mid-flight—until now. His latest, High, could have easily been 615, a project that got far enough along to have a name, structure, and even a few finished songs. Then he threw it out. “It’s never happened to me before,” he tells me. “But it stands to reason, because I’ve never approached a record the way I did that one.”
He started 615 with a plan: a Nashville-themed framework, a sense of direction. “Sometimes my records go off in all directions,” he laughs, “so I thought maybe I’ll give myself structure. Turns out, it gave me limitation.” The piecemeal recording didn’t help either. “We’d record one song when I was off the road, then another weeks later. Individually, they felt great. But when I put them all together… I went, ‘Oh crap, this doesn’t have any of this stuff.’” He gestures vaguely, the way you do when you’re talking about soul, not sound.
So he started over. Four songs survived. The rest went into the vault, or maybe the recycling bin. “All I want to do is capture an authentic photo of who I am right now musically,” he says. “Not a theme, not a concept—just a snapshot.”
That photo turned out colorful and kinetic. High opens up like a greatest-hits reel that hasn’t happened yet—anthemic, melodic, and unashamedly hook-hungry. “I’m a sucker for hooks,” he admits. “Always have been. I grew up on radio and ELO. Jeff Lynne was probably a bigger influence on me than I realized. He was my Beatles, because my parents didn’t have Beatles records. He taught me how to chase a melody until it glows.”
Urban’s idea of reinvention isn’t some self-conscious stylistic overhaul—it’s more like clearing the dust off what’s already inside him. “The only hard part is when I try something versus doing it,” he says. “When I try, it fails. When I do, it works.”
One song he definitely did is “Laughing All the Way to the Drank,” a loose-limbed jam that somehow feels like both an arena banger and a band rehearsal. “That came from soundcheck,” Urban says. “My drummer, Terrence Clark—he’s a great Memphis player—he’d be grooving, and we’d just start jamming. So I called Mike Elizondo and said, ‘Let’s bring Terrence into the studio. You play bass, he plays drums, I’ll play guitar, and let’s just jam all day.’ That’s how that song started. Just three guys jamming their asses off.”
It’s the kind of live spark Urban says he missed during the pandemic. “Touring is the rest of the record,” he says. “When you make an album, you’ve just written a song and immediately record it. I barely know the song. Going out and playing it live—that’s when I find its dimensions.” He pauses, grinning. “That’s also why I can’t play it the exact same every night. I can’t. I don’t want it to be too perfect.”
He’s got stories about that. “I saw Huey Lewis & The News once—they were so good. Like, identical to the record. Five songs in, my bass player and I just looked at each other and went, ‘Oh… this is like the record.’ And we left halfway through. Still love that band! But I realized then that you can be too good. Too rehearsed. I need something real happening in front of me.”
High thrives on that edge-of-the-moment feel. It’s full of radio-sized choruses that never sound factory-made. “Every song could be a single,” I tell him, and he shakes his head. “Nah, not every song should be,” he laughs. “But I do love when they can be. I like big melodies. I like things that make people feel something.”
He’s still the kind of artist who gets inspired by other people’s hits too. Recently, he covered Ariana Grande’s “We Can’t Be Friends.” “The first time I heard it, I got chills,” he says. “Didn’t even know what she was saying yet, but there was something in it. That’s when I believe in magic in songs—when you can feel it before you understand it. That’s rare.”
And then there’s the so-called “pop-country pipeline,” the ever-blurring space between his world and the Post Malones and Beyoncés of it all. “It’s all connected,” Urban shrugs. “Everyone’s just looking for something to pull from—past, present, whatever genre. A great song’s a great song.”
Which, really, could be the motto for High. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel, just drive it harder, faster, freer. “The whole point,” Urban says, “is to take a photo of who I am right now. Next year, I’ll be someone else.”
Watch the full interview above and then check out the track below.
