Keith Urban: 'I've Been With My Guitar Longer Than I Have Anybody On The Planet'

“I'm not sure what to do with my hands.” You might not expect Keith Urban to re-enact a scene from the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly comedy Talladega Nights during an interview promoting his forthcoming album, but it’s a scene that speaks volumes to the country superstar’s affable nature.

His Ricky Bobby impersonation was one to describe how lost he feels without a guitar; he’s featured firmly holding onto one on the cover of his 11th studio album, HIGH.

It’s a common trend among the Aussie legend’s artwork and press material, and his love for his guitar - and music as a whole - runs deep.

HIGH, which will likely cement itself as a favourite for many among Urban’s diverse output, features songs about the testing nature of love (Love Is Hard), struggling with a sense of place while growing up on the move (Heart Like A Hometown) and more; topics that could also apply to a musician’s complicated relationship with music and the found family often associated with being in a band.

“I've been with my guitar longer than anybody on the planet,” Urban says. “My guitar and me, it's a very strong, intimate relationship. So that's a really good point. I've never thought of that before, but yeah, I'm sure subconsciously it's threaded in there emotionally.”

Urban, who was last year inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, is sipping on a coffee the morning after an intimate gig in Brisbane at Lefty’s Music Hall, a far cry from the massive Aussie arena tour he confirmed for 2025 earlier this month.

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He says he enjoys “a lot of things” about revisiting the club shows that helped shape him as an artist.

“It's just real as it gets,” he stresses. “It's where everything starts. It's ground zero.”

The night previous, Urban and his band not only treated fans to the hits and a selection of tracks off HIGH but rolled out Cold Chisel’s Flame Trees, Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’, and several other requests shouted from the audience.

From the mic feedbacking to Jerry Flowers’ bass and strap held together by gaffer tape and a mid-set hug when Urban recognised someone in the crowd, the atmosphere was electric. While it would be easy to look back on his days slogging it out in clubs with rose-coloured glasses, Urban is much more realistic about things.

“I don't think I miss anything about it,” he laughs. “Because the truth is, little clubs are great to play if you don't have to. They're great to play, period. But God, when big headline artists go, ‘I love playing the clubs,’ I go, ‘That's because you don't have to.’ If you have to do it five nights a week, you might have a different relationship with it.”

HIGH IN BRISBANE ⬆️ Lefty's Music Hall what a badass night and a huge shoutout to Nepia and Harrison for coming out to vibe with us !!!
Posted by Keith Urban on Friday, September 6, 2024

Much like Urban’s Lefty’s gig, HIGH has a bit of everything, from party songs (Laughin' All The Way To The Drank) to deeply personal lyrics (Break The Chain) and solid collabs (Go Home W U feat. Lainey Wilson). But at one stage, his 11th studio album was going to be a lot different.

In 2022, he began work on a new album between gigs. The resulting body of work, 615, wasn’t something that Urban felt worked as a whole, and so it was completely scrapped.

“It's never happened to me before. I've never scrapped an album ever. I've made a bunch of them. But I think I've also learned that I'm going to have to, if I'm lucky, I'm going to go out and tour this thing for a good couple of years. So, I want it to be something I'm proud of.

“I made 615 in 2022 with the intent that it would be a more focused record. Because my records, especially maybe the last decade of albums, there's been a lot of songs that are harder to find what they are.

“And I don't know what Out The Cage is, and I don't know what Coming Home with Julia Michaels is, I don't know what genre or category that is. They blur boundaries and all the rest of it. And I thought, ‘I'm just going to make a record that's a bit more Nashville-centric, a bit more country.’ I did it, and the end result was quite linear because it was just one or two colours. It wasn't like a whole myriad of colours, and I missed it. I missed all the other stuff that was undefinable.”

The depth of HIGH is more evident with each listen, from subtle guitar riffs and powerful backing vocals in the aforementioned Heart Like A Hometown to specific lyrics in tracks like Chuck Taylors (sure to be a fan favourite).

“I like a lot of detail in recordings that don't get in the way but can be discovered eventually with repeat listens,” Urban says. “I love discovering something new, many, many listens in and suddenly going, ‘Never heard that thing before.’

“You put headphones on, and you're like, ‘I never noticed that counter thing happening over there. That's really cool.’ That little ambient texture, that little reverb decay that happened at that one moment, and that really fine detailed shit I love.”

It’s that detail that often gets lost live.

“The album is one version of each song, just one version and I want to go and explore it a bit more. And live gives me a chance to give it more dimension,” he explains.

“I did The Speed Of Now Part 1 in 2020, and then we couldn't tour that album until two years later. What I discovered is, touring for me isn't just money-making or playing in front of a live audience, it's also the rest of the album. It's how I get to bring more dimension to those songs.”

He adds: “I put those songs in context with other songs which may make them have more sense than as a standalone piece. When I did the Graffiti U album, I heard from a lot of people who were like, ‘I don't know what to make of this record, mate. I don't know. Songs are unusual.’ But they came and saw the tour, and I would meet people after multiple shows they'd been to, and they'd come to meet and greet and say, ‘I wasn't really keen on this album, but live, I got the songs way better.’ Because you would place them in and around other songs that made them [make] more sense. And they go, ‘I went back and listened to the record and loved it more.’ And I had the same thing happen with Kings Of Leon.

“I saw Kings Of Leon at Hordern Pavilion down in Sydney many, many years ago and they put out an album - I can't remember what the album was - and I loved The Kings. They put out the album, and I was a bit disappointed in the record. I was like, ‘Songs aren't so good.’ So I went and saw them live, I'm standing sidestage, and they would play a song. I'm like, ‘Fuck, it's a good song.’ And I'd look over the setlist and I took a note of what it was. I must have done this three times.

“I went home, [and] all of those songs were on that album I didn't like. And then I went listen to the album and I go, ‘Oh, I love these songs.’ So, I just needed them to have more context and dimension and the band did it live and helped the album.”

HIGH is an album that could easily keep an audience engaged if played start-to-finish live, and its final number, Break The Chain, would be a powerful closer.

In a letter that Urban penned for the album, he notes that the “sequencing of these 11 tracks is intentional”, adding that Break The Chain “was always going to be the final track on HIGH because that's one of the places I'm at right now. Working on trying to do some things different to how I was raised.”

The song’s second verse is a standout on the album:

Fighting my own battles with my demons / With the way that I was raised / Never safe / And never sure what made him so mad at the world / Mad at me / I was just a kid.

Urban shares: “That second verse was… that moment, it's just very powerful. It's one of those things where it's written, and then you go, ‘Fuck me.’ And I just sat there bawling my eyes out on this guy's couch when I wrote it.

“And I'd never met him before. I just met him that morning. And fuck, this is within 10 minutes of being there; I'm sitting on the couch with a legal pad, and get to that verse and just fucking put the pad down and start weeping. He's working on his laptop, shaping some track, and he looks at me; he goes, ‘Must be true.’ And he went back to work just unfazed. It was so perfect.”

Urban admits that breaking the chain isn’t easy.

“Even if you're just negative all the time and you go, ‘Fuck, I wish I was a bit more of a positive guy. I'm always fucking negative.’ And then you go, ‘Well, my fucking dad was negative, so that's where it came from. Oh, well, that's why I'm this way. It's not my fault. I was raised that way.’

“No, it's not your fault, but it's now your responsibility to do something about that or just keep perpetuating it and blaming your dad and having a fucked-up life. What would you like to do? Do you want to break that cycle, or do you want to just keep perpetuating it and having a shit life?

“They're both hard to do. To stay in the pattern is hard to do because you keep attracting the wrong people. Your life never gets going where you want it to be. But to break that pattern is really hard, too, because it's all you've ever known, and it's your identity. No matter what it is. Some people thrive on negativity. That's how they're wired. They're fucked when it's peaceful. Because they weren't raised with that.

“But it's fucking up their life, and they want to figure out how to change that. And then they're too old and they go, ‘Oh, I'm in my 70s now, I'm fucked.’ It's never too late to break the chain.”

In that same letter that Urban penned for HIGH, he says that one of the things he loves the most about making music is the mystery surrounding it. Despite having nine consecutive gold, platinum or multi-platinum albums under his belt, alongside countless awards and other accolades, he’s still no closer to solving that puzzle.

“I don't want to understand it; there's only more questions, isn't there?” he shares. “At the end of the day, it's all a mystery. It's wonderful. Music is completely mysterious. It's a big mix of craft, skill, gift, shitloads of work and then just sheer magic.

“You can write an amazing song one day, and the next day, that same group of songwriters write a piece of shit. Why? What happened? How come you couldn't do that twice? So, you know something's just mysterious.”

HIGH is out September 20 via EMI Music Australia.