Keith Urban can’t wait for 2025. The New Zealand native, who just released his latest HIGH album, says that he has plenty to look forward to, especially now that the record is out, including hitting the road next year.
“I love writing songs,” Urban shares on the Today Show. “The next song is what I’m interested in, recording the next album, putting the next tour together. I’m so excited about the tour next year, The High Tour, which we’re gonna do in 2025, and be announcing shortly. I’m so ready for that.”
“Playing live. It’s such a high for me,” he adds.
Urban just wrapped up the first part of his Las Vegas residency, HIGH in Vegas, which will continue with five more shows in February.
“Vegas is great, because it’s just unpredictable,” Urban explains. “It’s just wild energy. This is our third residency there. I love it.”
HIGH is filled with positive, feel-good tracks, the result of a record Urban scrapped in favor of making his new project. The songs are of course for his fans, but the 57-year-old says they are also for himself.
“I realized that I need them,” Urban explains. “I need them to keep me from the negativity, the darkness, the insecurity, the depression, all of it. I’ve got to stay in motion. And I think those songs can sometimes be whistling-in-the-dark songs for me. They’re a way to keep me company in the midst of all the darkness, and keep me moving. That may not be who I am, but they’re who I need to be to keep moving.”
The record’s title might be unexpected for someone who has been sober since 2006, but to him, HIGH made perfect sense.
“I love how many interpretations go through a person’s head when they hear that word,” Urban says. “And they’re all spot-on. It conjures up different things for different people, from a mountaintop, just feeling phenomenal, to a Willie Nelson concert, to whatever it is that you want to interpret that word. To me, they’re all spot-on. They’re all spot-on. I’ve never named an album after a song, ’cause I always feel like that’s disrespectful to the other songs on the record. So far I’ve never done it. I wanted a good, strong, simple word that captured the energy and the spirit of the record.
“And that word, I started hearing it in all these songs … it kept happening all through the record,” he continues. “And I thought, the one thing we agree on is that it is apparently the destination. That’s where we all want to go to, or get to. And how we get there is individual. That’s different for everyone of us, how we get there. But we do want to get there. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s it. That’s what this record is. It’s ‘HIGH.’”
Urban will headline and co-host Music City’s upcoming New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash, performing alongside Jelly Roll and Kane Brown. The show will air live on CBS on December 31, from 8:00 to 10:00 PM ET and 10:30 PM to 1:30 AM ET, and stream on Paramount+. The free show will take place at Nashville’s Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park.
Find HIGH and all of Urban’s music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC