Keith Urban put a lot of thought into the title of his new album, HIGH. The 56-year-old will release his 11th studio album on Friday, September 20, 11 songs that encompass where Urban is in his life right now.
“I’ve never wanted to call an album after a song,” Urban explains, in a video shared on social media. “Whenever somebody’s named their album after one song on the record, it’s like the whole family’s named after one kid. It’s what it feels like. All the other songs are like, ‘What about me?'”
Throughout his 25-plus year career, the New Zealand native has put a lot of effort into the name of each of his records, ever since his eponymous debut came out in 1999.
“I’ve always wanted to have an album that didn’t single out any one song,” Urban says. “So far I’ve done that with every album. That also ended up being what was happening in my life at the time. The first album is just self-titled, so it’s like, ‘This is me. There it is.’ Golden Road was feeling like I was starting my journey, so that title was very much about that. I started reading lots of books on being present, because I wanted to be more present in my life, and so that [third] record was called Be Here. The next one after that started to get a little more complicated, so it was called Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing.
“Every record has almost had a subject line, like an email subject line,” he adds. “Every album title has been that. And HIGH definitely is a place of euphoria.”
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Urban admits that the title can be a bit misleading, since he has been sober since 2006. The father of two also included several songs that reference drinking, an intentional decision he made, even though he no longer partakes.
“Separate to my recovery journey, I’m exactly the guy I’ve always been in my spirit and my edge and devilishness, whatever you want to call it,” Urban explains to Billboard. “All that stuff that happened coming up playing in the clubs in Australia, and then paying my dues here — all of that is still a big part of who I am. And so now I sing those songs from having been in those places.”
Urban currently has a Top 15 hit with ““Messed Up As Me.”,” the debut single from HIGH, one of the songs that are a light-hearted look at drinking too much.
“’Messed Up as Me,’ I know exactly who that guy is,” Urban shares. “’Laughing All the Way to the Drank,’ I know exactly who that guy is. But in a lot of these cases, I’m also singing to people in the audience. I see that guy in the audience every night. He doesn’t seem to have a lot, but he seems to be the guy having the best time, and he’s a hard-working dude Monday to Friday. He’s my dad.
“My dad was up at 6:00 AM, and he’d be drinking all the night before,” he adds. “So those songs are all places, people I know. They’re real songs in that regard, every one of them.”
See a track list for HIGH below. Pre-order/pre-save the project here. Urban will kick off his HIGH in Vegas residency in October. Find all of Urban’s music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.
HIGH Track List:
1. BLUE SKY
2. STRAIGHT LINE
3. MESSED UP AS ME
4. WILDSIDE
5. GO HOME W U (WITH LAINEY WILSON)
6. CHUCK TAYLORS
7. DAYTONA
8. LOVE IS HARD
9. HEART LIKE A HOMETOWN
10. LAUGHIN’ ALL THE WAY TO THE DRANK
11. DODGE IN A SILVERADO
12. BREAK THE CHAIN