It’s been almost 26 years since Keith Urban‘s eponymous solo album was released in 1999. In many ways, Urban admits he doesn’t feel like an artist with more than a quarter of a century behind him. But when it’s time to put together a setlist, like he is on his High and Alive World Tour, Urban feels the fullness of all of those years behind him.
“I just love making music and that hasn’t changed,” Urban tells The Oakland Press. “I don’t feel like someone who’s had a long career — until I put a tour together and I suddenly realize how many songs I’ve got on this setlist that people know, which is an amazing feeling.”
In an era where more and more artists are focusing on singles instead of full albums, Urban says he tends to lean more towards wanting to do entire projects, not that he is critical of others who make different choices.
“I’d like to think it’s relative to every artist’s authentic self,” Urban says. “Certain artists lean more into single-type work or EPs. Other artists lean into albums. I think they grow audiences that are attuned to that, too.”
With that said, the 57-year-old is a bit wary of artists whose careers explode thanks to social media, without the years of experience and hard work behind them.
“What I think we’re seeing a lot of right now is potentially short-term decisions by certain artists,” Urban acknowledges. “They have umpteen million TikTok followers, and they go out and headline and all of that. They’re motivated by streaming numbers and metrics and wanting to get those numbers up. It’s not about going the distance and building steadily and solidly for a long-term career.”
Urban has a new perspective about making records, after scrapping his former album in favor of what became HIGH, released last year.
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“Maybe I just had to find out why I make records the way I do, and that’s what I did,” Urban reflects. “This taught me that if my records are scattershot, at least they’re organically scattershot. It keeps everything exciting and fresh. No guardrails, just go in and make some music.”
Urban is still tweaking his High and Alive World Tour setlist, and probably will for the remainder of the tour. The “Straight Line” singer, who also has several new band members on the road with him, is constantly striving to pick the right songs, as well as determining the right order to put them in.
“It’s a lot of trial and error with setlists for me,” Urban concedes. “I agonize over setlists. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube. I spend months and months over setlists, tweaking, coming back to it every couple of days, looking at it. I put a playlist together and Iisten to the songs back-to-back-to-back and just feel the flow from one song into the next – energy-wise, thematically, the key, tempo, everything.
“Does this feel like it should flow out of that? Is the audience gonna be exhausted right about here? This would be a good time for a ballad,” he continues. “This would be a good time to strip it down to an acoustic song and then BOOM right back out of the gate again. Trying to imagine what the live experience is gonna be, and put a setlist together for it … We’ll just keep making changes as the tour unfolds.”
Find HIGH and all of Urban’s music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.