Keith Urban Discusses His New Album and Working with Lainey Wilson on The Highway

Keith Urban sat down in front of a live audience at SiriusXM’s Nashville Skyline Studio for an album special titled “Keith Urban: The Making of ‘HIGH’” on The Highway (Ch. 56). During the special, the country superstar discussed the creation of his new album, “HIGH,” opened up about processing his father’s death and how his father’s struggles with alcoholism inspired the song “BREAK THE CHAIN,” and talked about his collaboration with Lainey Wilson.

The HighwayCountry’s next generationListen on the AppListen on the App

Listen to the premiere of “Keith Urban: The Making of ‘High’” on The Highway on Friday, September 20, at 8pm ET, with rebroadcasts throughout the weekend. The full special will also be available on the SiriusXM app.

“HIGH” is Keith’s 11th studio album and drops on September 20.

Keith Urban on Processing His Father’s Death

Keith Urban: My dad died alcoholic, and I would never in a million years thought that I was still processing that or working through that in any way, but apparently, I’m still working on that, and I got to the second verse of this song and I make a loose mention about my dad in this thing and I’m sitting on the couch and I just burst out crying. I’m just sitting on this complete stranger’s couch weeping in a fetal position. He’s working on his laptop, and he looks over at me and he goes, “Hmm. Must be true,” and then he went back to work again, and it was actually the perfect thing to say ’cause it just let me stay in it. It wasn’t, he didn’t have an opinion. He just clocked it as being something that must be real, and it was written quickly. I got a microphone. We sang the song. I did a vocal on it. I added some harmonies, did some backing vocals. It was quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Not overthinking it and he sent me, the next day, he sent me the thing, and I went, “This kind of sounds like the record and I think I’m gonna end my album with this.” I haven’t got the album finished yet, but I definitely want to finish, but this song, because it’s not a sad song. It’s a song that captures what I think about my own journey, which is that I’m not, it’s not my fault where I come from, how I was born, the family I was raised in. It’s not my fault, but it is my responsibility to either do something about that or just sit there and blame my parents and blame my upbringing and keep doing that for the rest of my life and not change a thing and just perpetuate whatever that was, and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to break the chain and do things differently. I haven’t done it to the degree that I want to. I’m a work in progress, but I know that that’s not my fault in the past, but this is my responsibility moving forward and it’s never too late to break the chain and it closes the album for a good reason.

Keith Urban on Working with Lainey Wilson

Keith Urban: Then a friend of mine, Dan McCarroll, said, “Hey, you’re trying to find a song with Lainey, right?” and I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “That go home with you song could be a good duet. I mean, you know, just have her sing the second verse,” and I was like, “That’s a really good idea,” so texted Lainey and I said, “Can I send you a song?” and I sent her that. She loved it, put her vocal on it. And um, and then, and then it ended up being this badass thing, so I’m so grateful for Lainey for singing this. Gosh, she’s such a good singer, isn’t she? I mean, she’s just, gosh. She’s so good. Okay, so “GO HOME W U.” I think you guys will enjoy how we had to do it because we kept trying to figure out a way for me to film on a day when Lainey had a day off, which is impossible right now, to find two days, so it didn’t happen and I’m like, “We’re never gonna get this video shot.” We got to sing it at CMA Fest and I made sure they filmed her particularly there ’cause I knew I was going to use that footage in the way in which we do the video. That’s all I can say, so I got us to perform together in this video. Yeah. There it is. So cryptic.