Keith Urban hasn’t released a full-length album since The Speed of Now Part 1 in September 2020. And it turns out there’s quite a story as to why.
“I started work on another album called 615 at the end of ’21, into 2022,” he explains. “I was recording that album across most of 2022. And I recorded 13 songs that I loved, and sequenced it and brought that album in to my team in February 2023 with the intent that this is my new album.”
But as playback began, Keith started to change his mind.
“I got about three or four songs into it and suddenly realized that I wasn’t happy with it,” he recalls. “It wasn’t bad. It just didn’t give me the bigger, broader dimension of feeling that I wanted to get from my album.”
But all wasn’t lost: Four tracks survive as part of HIGH, which arrives Friday.
“I cherry-picked four songs off that album that I loved: ‘Messed Up as Me,’ ‘Daytona,’ ‘Heart Like a Hometown’ and a song called ‘Break the Chain.’ So those four songs were on that record,” he reveals. “I took those with me and basically started again writing and recording, and that took another year and a half.”
Incidentally, the arrival of HIGH comes just one day before Keith’s quadruple Platinum Be Here album marks its 20th anniversary.
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