We now know more about what songs will be on Keith Urban‘s upcoming The Speed of Now Part 1 album, but there are still a couple of details we don’t know. The 52-year-old shared the track list on social media, but intentionally left out who his duet partners are on two songs.
“This is THE SPEED OF NOW,” Keith posted, along with the list of songs.
This is THE SPEED OF NOW. pic.twitter.com/YZ1eGhX0Mq
— Keith Urban (@KeithUrban) August 5, 2020
One thing we do know is that there are 16 songs on the record, with one of them being a collaboration with Eric Church on “We Were.” Other songs include “Superman,” “Polaroid,” and his current single, “God Whispered Your Name.”
Keith already had the album title when the coronavirus pandemic forced everyone inside their own homes, and realized that the title took on an even more powerful meaning as a result.
“I guess the title of the album has been the most asked question I’ve gotten, and that’s one of those crazy art-imitating-life, life-imitating-art moments,” Keith shared with Variety. “The title The Speed of Now came to me last year for multitudes of reasons, mostly just because I felt like everything was just careening almost out of control. Everywhere I went, it seemed like people were going faster, everything was moving faster, life was going faster. So it was a bit of a commentary about the absurdity of where I felt like we were at.
“Fast forward to March and April of this year, where everything just ground to a halt,” he continued. “I was shell-shocked. And I’d said to a couple of friends of mine, ‘I’m going to have to come up with a different album title.’ And they said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Well, this made sense last year.’ They said, ‘Yeah, but the speed of now is very different to what it was last year.’ So I think people will have a different relationship with that title, which took on a whole new meaning.”
Keith and his family, including his wife, actress Nicole Kidman, and daughters Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret, have been enjoying plenty of quality time together, even though being off the road hasn’t been easy for the The New Zealand-born star
“The truth is, I was quite artistically paralyzed for the first part of lockdown,” Keith conceded. “I unapologetically state that because I had been in the midst of not only playing gigs in Vegas and doing a bit of touring, but going down to studios here in Nashville and recording and having cameras and musicians floating around, and I’m engaged with people everywhere, and all of a sudden that stops. And I’m like, what the hell?
“There’s no touring,” he continued. “There’s no going to other studios. There’s no collaborating with people. And I didn’t know what to do, honestly. I wasn’t very excited to sit in front of my laptop with an acoustic guitar and keep playing a bunch of songs. That just didn’t interest me. After you do it once, you’re like, “Okay. There’s 4 million people doing this on YouTube every day. What are we doing here?” And I just didn’t want to do anything for a good few weeks.”
The Speed of Now Part 1 will be released on September 18. It is currently available for pre-order via Amazon