The one and only Keith Urban joined Baylen Leonard as the first ever guest on Absolute Radio Country this morning. The station, formerly known as Country Hits Radio, relaunched today as it joined the Absolute Radio Network of stations, offering even more to its gig and guitar loving audience.
Keith Urban on his lockdown experience - “At the beginning of the whole lockdown I was a bit frozen honestly... I was working on my album ‘The Speed of Now’ and it’s like you know when the power goes off, and you’re like how long is this going to be like this? My plan was I was just going to put my comfy pants on and sit on the couch and eat chips until the whole thing blew over, that was my plan. Suddenly I went, this is a big thing and it’s going to take a while. I had to figure out how to get on track again, just pivot and rethink everything and become adaptable to this new environment.”
On streaming a concert from his Driveway – “Seems like as good a place as any! Nic (Nicole Kidman) had gotten all of these beautiful lights put in the driveway for Christmas, and we loved them so much we thought let’s just leave them up. I thought it’d be a nice place to go out and sing some songs in the driveway with all these pretty lights in the background. It felt very alive and festive. That’s what I wanted people to feel at that time was a sense of together and festive. Because it was the antithesis to a lot of what people were going through.”
On his new song ‘Out the Cage’ - “It was predicated on my love of those 90s Fatboy Slim records, and The Prodigy and some of that intense rhythmic energy. I wanted to try and write something that was built on that rhythmic bed. I brought the idea to a friend of mine, Breland who ended up singing on the song as well. He’s great, we’re working on another song right now, one of his songs I’m guesting on…
“I said to him this can’t just be about lockdown, I don’t just wanna hear about that. I don’t wanna hear about that next year that’s for sure. But I do want a song to help me out of whatever I’m stuck in. Whether that’s a crap job or a relationship that’s going nowhere, or my own negativity. Just anything and any one situation that I wanted to break out of.”
On when UK fans can expect to see Keith again – “We’re trying to lean in to look at when next year we can come across. Our world tour is going to start in Australia in December. It was supposed to be December last year… Everything’s been pushed a little bit but I’m hoping we can get to the UK much sooner. Hopefully the earlier part of next year, my fingers are crossed for that.”
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