Keith Urban had an unlikely source of inspiration for his forthcoming album. In an interview with The Associated Press, the country star revealed how the New Radicals’ 1998 alt-rock album, titled Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too, helped him figure out how he wanted to craft his new release, High.
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“The album had this beautiful flowing energy of organized and chaos,” Urban said. He noted that while one song on the album was structured, the next was a “stream of consciousness, random.”
“The spirit of most of my albums,” Urban added, “has contained some element of that.”
With that in mind, Urban scarped his planned release, 615.
“It was just a lot of the same kind of thing,” he said. “It was missing the spirit of the curiosity of the edges and places that I’m interested in exploring and going to.”
What followed was High, which is due out Sept. 20.
“I’ve got a dutiful, responsible, reliable side. And I’ve got this animalistic, wild, reckless, irresponsible, ‘What does this button do?’ [side],” he explained. “The spirit of those two things is very much a part of who I am, and this album hopefully captures that.”
His first new album in four years, Urban previously told American Songwriter what its title means to him.
“It has so many different interpretations to people, but it’s a place of utopia,” he said. “It’s a place to try and get to. We all agree on that. We just may have different ways of getting there, but it’s definitely the destination.”
It’s also a bit tongue and cheek, given that Urban’s been sober for years.
“I loved the uncomfortable humor of it, too,” he said. “Have you heard Keith Urban’s High? It’s just such a perfect phrase. I like all the playfulness of it.”
Keith Urban Cried While Writing One Song on the Album
Urban teamed up with new collaborator Marc Scibilia to pen “Break the Train,” an emotional track about growing up amid his dad’s struggle with addiction.
“It’s a lot to do with my dad and being born into a family with an alcoholic father and the challenges that come with that,” Urban told AP. “My job is to now maybe break that chain and do something different. But I never mentioned alcohol in the song once because I didn’t want the song to be about that. It’s really about behavioral patterns that we all learn very quickly to survive in whatever environment that we’re in.”
The track, Urban said, is “offering hope and a way through a situation that a lot of people might find themselves in.”
While writing the song, Urban told American Songwriter that the lyrics “just kept coming and coming and coming.”
“They just kept coming and coming and coming,” he said of the song’s lyrics. “And I get to this second verse about my dad, and I just start bawling my eyes out on this couch at this complete stranger’s house.”
“I was sitting over there just crying like I was in therapy. He looks over at me and just says, ‘Must be true.’ And then went right back to work again,” Urban continued. “It’s just one of those beautiful moments of a song meant to come.”
Featured Photo by Richard Shotwell/Shutterstock
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