When Keith Urban “finished” his latest record, the world looked a little different.
A ceaseless Nashville entertainer, Urban first wrapped this collection of songs as he tore to Las Vegas for residency gigs and eyeballed a season of festival performances with, hopefully, new tunes.
But the record wasn’t actually finished.
“I had an album that could’ve been finished and put out by the time all the pandemic hit, but also right before that — December, January, February, that whole period — I [felt] like there’s just a few songs that I hadn’t found or written yet for this record to just finish it out,” Urban told The Tennessean. “I wasn’t sure what those songs were, even thematically. I just knew there was something missing.”
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And, as COVID-19 precautions caused much of the world to temporarily fall silent in March, Urban found time to make new noise.
Listeners hear the result in “The Speed of Now Part 1,” an urgent and timely follow-up to 2018’s “Graffiti U.” On the 16-track record, the 52-year-old superstar exudes his expertise in crafting intercontinental songs — rooted in popular country music — that push an otherwise unchained sonic landscape known to many as uniquely Urban.
The album releases Friday via Capitol Records/UMG Nashville, two days after Urban hosted the 55th annual ACM Awards at the Grand Ole Opry House.
“I ended up with lots of time,” Urban said. “[Some] songs got done because of that ‘found’ time, but also those songs were affected by the time, as well.
“There’s a universality about these songs that doesn’t limit them to just this one specific situation that we’re in.”
What is ‘The Speed of Now’?
Urban coined his album “The Speed of Now Part 1” last October, before “Now” meant Zoom calls, drive-in concerts and award shows without audiences.
Around him at the time, he saw the “Speed” of modern life — emotionally, physically and spiritually, he said — impacted more each year by expanding technology.
It felt unsustainable, he said.
“It just felt like we’re picking up the speed through the roof,” Urban said. “This thing is just getting faster and faster all the time. It’s part of evolution, but this smart phone in everybody’s pocket is driving a new speed that we’re not doing well keeping up with. I couldn’t see where the end game was … how long do we keep this up?”
And then “boom,” Urban said. COVID-19 turned “Now,” as a concept, on its head.
“I was gonna change the title,” Urban said. “I was like, ‘This is absurd. What does this mean now?’ But a couple of friends of mine said, ‘I think people will think you thought of it because of this.’
“I guess it took on a different meaning.”
From jangly and wistful pop-rock heard on “Superman” to a dim-lighted intimacy outlined on “Ain’t It Like A Woman,” Urban etches the sound of “Now” throughout each tune. He spent “months and months and months” cutting nuanced electric guitar for layered country rock ripper “Tumbleweed” and closed the album by revisiting 2019 single “We Were” as a duet with the song’s chief writer, Eric Church.
Urban may make records in a self-proclaimed “messy kitchen,” but the end result coalesces not unlike a familiar showing at Bridgestone Arena.
“It’s a feeling of a flowing energy between this song into that song …,” Urban said. “I really shape it like it’s a show, like it’s a setlist. That’s how I’ve always sequenced myrecords.”
He continued, “I know the song I wanna open with, I know the song I wanna close with and I know the journey I wanna go on in-between. It’s just finding and piecing and pulling together all of the songs that create that feeling.”
‘Jumping in the sandbox’
The record showcases a global country sound synonymous with the Australian artist raised on Johnny Cash — who once cut his teeth in a metal band — and strives to collaborate with disco legends.
He enlisted British songwriter Eg White for “Better Than I Am,” an interstellar ballad grounded in honesty; for the aforementioned “Superman,” Urban hosted a retreat with an unlikely troupe of songwriters from Los Angeles and Nashville (“Like a dinner party, really,” Urban said — a “let’s just see what happens” meet between eclectic guests).
“I’ve gotten much, much better at letting go of expectations … just suiting up, showing up and seeing what happens,” Urban said. “Being in the studio for me is like jumping in the sandbox. Let’s find some people to build some things with. Let’s see what happens. You never know, but you gotta be in it.”
No song may represent the gumbo stewing at his Tennessee compound better than album opener “Out The Cage.”
Urban recruited Chic legend Nile Rodgers (Urban and Rogers first connected in 2016 out of “perseverance” from the former, he said) and genre-blending upstart Breland for a track that wouldn’t be out of place in the 1990s European trip-hop scene.
Along with album tracks “Say Something” and “Live With,” Urban said “Out The Cage” was born after COVID-19 put a resounding pause on 2020 plans. With lines such as “I think they just lock me up to taunt me/I won’t ever let nobody own me/ I won’t let these thoughts of freedom haunt me,” the song plays to 2020, but Urban hopes its message outlasts quarantine.
“[It’s] speaking broader to confinement of all kind,” Urban said. “That song meant just as much to me for people in dead end jobs or stuck relationships or so many situations where we’re confined, oppressed, held back and just wanna break free of it.
“I wanted this song to speak to all those situations.”
He found a vigorous counterpart in Breland, a 24-year-old Atlanta artist whose single “My Truck” closes a continually shrinking gap between modern country and hip-hop music. Urban tracked down Breland after hearing his debut earworm.
A Wednesday night call between the artists turned into Breland cleaning his slate for an immediate session that Friday morning. Breland booked it from Atlanta to meet Urban, showing up about a half-hour early, he said. For Urban’s record, they co-wrote wrote “Soul Food” and “Out The Cage.”
The newcomer joins Church, Rodgers and pop star P!nk as a credited guest artist on the album.
“He’s amazing,” Urban said. “If you’re driven and passionate and hungry and curious and motivated, it’s what you’re meant to do. It’s how I sought out Nile. I got on a plane and went to New York and hustled him until we got in a studio.”
And Rodgers wouldn’t be the only Rock and Roll Hall of Famer to join Urban on “Speed of Now.”
He tapped Heartbreakers co-founder Benmont Tench for keys on single “God Whispered Your Name,” which Urban tracked with an ace band and award-winning engineer Ed Cherney. It would be one of the last sessions from Cherney, who died in 2019.
“I wanted to do so many more songs with that exact same combination and, unfortunately, we lost Ed way too soon and I never got to do more recording with that particular group,” Urban said. “But that song really came to life for me.”
As for what the next session could bring? Like much of this year — and the unbounded music that preceded it — a fresh canvas awaits.
“It’s always a blank slate,” Urban said.