Keith Urban talks New Music, New Tattoos and a New Name?

i am so so happy to sit down with you uh today and chat even if it's on zoom it's so great to be able to connect uh at a distance and i wanted to start out because uh last time i spoke to you we were talking about tattoos and since you've gotten i noticed a new one on your hand is that correct oh yeah that's that's new yes yeah what's the significance behind that um good question do you have any tattoos i do just have one but uh i cover it up most times because i don't uh i've is it is it part of your past it's part of my past and it's just not something that i've like am super pumped about anymore so i wear it apparently oh it's under your watch band yeah i try and hide that and then when i don't wear my watch people are always like you have a tattoo because i always have it hidden i had my wife's middle name put on my no my fingers and i realized that i suddenly can't really wear any rings on that hand because otherwise her name becomes may or ahri or various various things um they don't tell you that when you're getting tattoos on your fingers that you probably won't be able to wear any rings yeah but i think the tattoos is its own form of jewelry anyways so i think you don't need them it's true that's yeah uh so also loved hearing you on the taylor swift out of the vault you were in two songs on that which was so awesome to hear and i was wondering if she's gonna be returning the favor possibly being on the speed of now part two or if you can touch on any collaborations that you may have because i'm anticipating a part two is coming i would sing with her in a heartbeat um i feel like i've known taylor forever uh it was great getting to sing on those songs with her and yeah i mean i would love i would love to do something with her on my record at some point so uh that's an open invitation for sure we're putting it out there right now very putting it out there but uh just in case um uh collaborations i'm always i'm more sort of thinking of of those you know and looking for unusual ones probably i'm most intrigued by unexpected collabs uh somebody like breeland oh i love out of the cage just because when i when i got to really know him i was like oh we we should we should get in the studio and see what happens because i i think something very unusual will happen if we can get together it'd be something that you or i wouldn't do on our own it would be this third thing so let's let's see what happens and you know soul food and out the cage um and other things came came out of that there's actually a song of his that i collaborated on that it's going to be coming out very soon as well oh exciting okay so that's the insight that we get to upcoming collaborations there you go yes also i am in i'm an advent com app listener straight up i listen to them every single night before i go to bed so when i saw your name pop up on there i was so excited to see that and you've been putting me to sleep for quite a few weeks now quite a few months and i am very intrigued to hear the process behind that did you take bits of that go home try to fall asleep to it rework it or did you just do it in the studio and you're like this feels right i'm just this is it it feels good right now see it was the last one it was it it was um probably just uh thinking of all the things particularly massage music you know when you go to a spa or something like that i feel like i've been doing that for so many years that there's certain chordal structures and melodic things and whatever atmospheres that i was trying to capture and having never done it before i felt a bit of a novice and it's the first time in my life where i looked in the control room and thought if the engineer is not falling asleep i'm sucking at my job right now the one and only time that you want to put people to sleep with your music i want to look in there and see to see the guy's head just completely on the console and i'll be like yes that's so good i'm upset about because i always want to listen to the entire thing through but i i can't because i'm just asleep within minutes of it but from what i have heard before i drift off it's so spot-like and so dreamy and so nice i i love it thank you thank you and like to kind of piggyback on that because obviously that's not a country genre type of thing that you do and with brayland as well you know you push the boundaries on being this multi-genre type of artist and does it bug you when you get misconceptions about that do you care do you not that you're not in this country box or is it something you're like i'm just doing me and that's all yeah i've never thought about pushing the boundaries of anything because that would that would be me claiming i've just created a country song that doesn't sound country at all that then i think you it would be fair to say oh you're really pushing the boundaries but i do stuff that has nothing to do with country like out the cage like um plenty of songs i mean gemini off of uh graffiti you there's plenty of songs that have nothing to do with country yeah um because i grew up playing top 40 covers you know that's kind of how i got my start um playing a mix of country and top 40 covers in cover bands and so my music's always had that big sort of fusion of different things and at some point i gave up trying to sort of fuse it and just go well just just write what you want to write record what you want to write and just make it authentic half of what i do i don't think it lives in any category so um i always always chuckle at people kind of going that's not country and i go no quite right you're absolutely spot on that is not at all but i think that country i what people like kind of frustrates me and i love countries so much but is that country um listeners rather don't understand that every musical genre evolves and rock and roll it evolved from classic rock to what it is now in countries evolving and this is the evolution of country music and i i think it's so fresh and so fun and it's a new perspective that i i wish that would stop getting a label put on it that's just well you know for people who love allen jackson who would listen to what we do now they'd say that's not allen jackson country music people that listened to patsy cline hated what alan jackson did to the genre people who loved earnest tub hated what patsy klein did to the genre and it's just it's the same all the way back every every generation brings a fusion that's unique to themselves because it's based on the music that they grew up with and it's not it's different you know it's different so the music right now that so many country artists grew up with was a lot of 90s a lot of uh early hip-hop uh r b from the 90s and country from the late 80s which was very pop driven or not so much the latest but even early 80s a very pop driven country so there's a there's always influences coming into it you know and then it's just the way that every artist filters those influences into their music that makes it unique my the only the only thing i ever have an issue with is when something is just completely derivative and i'm like right okay it it it sounds like it's cut straight out of the 90s but it's not the 90s so what what n what new element are you bringing to it because we already had that i've heard that what that and what what's the other thing what's the new what's the ingredients the new ingredients yeah i love that perspective and i think that's healthy to have and that's probably why you're always evolving and you always have this new sound so uh on that though so i love like listening to interviews with some of my favorite writers and a common theme that i found is that they say that they write their book and then they go on their book tour and as they start discussing the book with people they realized ah i wish i would have written that different or cut that out and have you ever released an album or a song or something and then you realize after the fact i wish i would have done this differently and if so what was it oh god yeah yeah absolutely yes it's a great question because it's true it's um you know the recorded version of a song is is literally just that it's one version it's the version you recorded that day or that week or whatever but that's that version and then you go out and you start playing the song live and the thing morphs and evolves and grows and it's it's the version we did in vancouver that night and it's the version we did over there they're all variations on it and i think um uh that's that's just a song staying alive you know night after night and finding it's like the story that you know everybody's got a book that they love and they've read it multiple times and like why did you read it multiple times the words didn't change and you're like but the meaning my connection to it did it kept changing so it's just it's the same thing with songs yeah that's why i do love seeing you live too because i'll be singing the recorded version when you're doing it and then you go off on this other thing i'm like oh that was okay that's a fresh new take on this song and that's always fun to see if you go to back-to-back shows with you the first show is completely different than the other and that's i think what is always so enticing about seeing you live is the element of surprise that comes with it well sometimes too it's um like we had a song called we were which is on um i guess one of the early singles off uh the speed of now yeah and we we were doing festivals when that song came out it had just come out on the radio so people didn't know it yet we'd go out and play these festivals and we'd do that song and it just wasn't it didn't it didn't seem to be connecting with people and i'm like what do we do with this so why is it not connected i thought well i don't know it yet and i'm like okay then it's i think it's a really good song and i thought why do i think it's a good song i said i think it's a good story okay well then get rid of the band and play it acoustic and tell the story beforehand like this forget the record forget that whatever just tell the story of the song and i started playing the song solo with my acoustic guitar and it changed the whole thing because then it then people could connect with it yeah you know without the big sort of bomb the big big band and the whole thing because they they didn't know the record yet so that that whole thing was just a bit distracting and they couldn't get to the story so that's one of those things that you know it's just figuring out how to connect and that's that's all i ever want to do live yeah just adapting too as well in the moment yeah yes exactly so i don't want to keep you too long because i know we're on a time frame but i do want to ask you one last question and it was this thing that we did on the air this week and it got just a ton of reaction it was a lot of fun and i imagine you'll probably have a pretty cool answer to this so the question was what is your rap name but you have to follow this formula it's lil lil followed by the last thing that you bought so like mine was little avocado because i literally just went out and grabbed avocados for breakfast on the day that we did this so i wonder what the last thing that you bought was but in your wrath well i bought it i bought a really cool pair of sneakers so it'd be little kids little kicks i like that you spun it around and make it fresh too yeah little kicks yeah that'd be me well i will forever and always reference you as little kicks from here on no kicks yeah which will end up getting shortened to lil kaye let's face it right yeah that's me which actually just works out like yeah you first name basis kind of kristen come on well i i'm sticking with a little avocado because i feel like that's a little bit more of a unique spin but i would gladly take on little k times two or whatever it may be [Laughter] i remember this this t-shirt i saw with a uh two two little cartoon avocados and have you seen that with the guy and the girl and the girl avocado was running away in tears and the guy avocado is yelling i said you were the good fat is that your best i think that's your best dad joke that might be something that you should like tell your girls this because that's ultimate dad joke material right there yeah perfect i'm gonna be little k wearing that t-shirt and just be yeah that's right i'll find you the shirt thank you so much thank you so much can't wait for uh the speed of now part two to come out and to get you back in vancouver get you back in canada me too me too i'm ready yeah i know eric church just announced dates uh right here in vancouver so fingers crossed that maybe that's uh we're gonna get a little pressure's on eric put the pressure on i get it i hear you all right low kicks is coming i absolutely love that thank you so much have a fantastic day and a fantastic weekend stay safe you too kristen so nice to talk to you

Channel: QX104 Country - Winnipeg

Views: 13,601

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Id: GUoT8bNKll8

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Fri May 07 2021