Keith Urban‘s upcoming The Speed of Now Part 1 album includes “Polaroid,” a song that he didn’t write, but fell in love with the first time he heard it. The video shows snapshots of people hanging out by a pool, something that was fortunately shot right before the coronavirus pandemic forced everyone to self-isolate.
“We were lucky with the ‘Polaroid’ video, because we shot it out in Los Angeles, about two weeks before all the lockdown started,” Keith recalled on Australian radio station K-Rock. We had no idea it was coming, and got that video done, and wrapped. There’s no way we could have done that kind of video now, of course. We were lucky.”
It was Keith’s early days as an aspiring musician that made him fall in love with “Polaroid” the first time he heard it.
“I really connected with the song,” Keith previously said of the fun tune. “I used to have this house that I lived in with a few guys in my band and at some point, someone gave us this polaroid camera. We used it to take pictures of everybody and everything – crazy stuff that happened. We had all of them posted on a big board and I so clearly saw that the minute I heard the song.”
The video for “Polaroid” is one of Keith’s favorites, even though it wasn’t as elaborate as some of his other ones.
“I was sent a really simple treatment,” Keith recalled. “It was all centered around a pool party and this contraption called a MoCo that’s programmed to do what you see in the video – swoop in, pan out, look around and swoop right back and do the exact same motion again and again. You’re able to place people in these different places, positions and then freeze moments. It was pretty trippy.”
Keith is unexpectedly off the road due to COVID-19, but he hints he may get to see a lot of his fans, even his international ones, in 2021.
“We’re doing a world tour next year,” Keith announced. “We were hoping to start in Australia; I still hope we get to do that. But there’s nothing set right now –– I’m just hoping that we can do that. In the meantime, of course, I’m at work pretty hard on finishing The Speed of Now Part 1 and have got a lot of it done. It’s going really well.
“And actually, the lockdown has gotten me really, really closer, because I’ve got the studio here at the house, and I’ve been able to get in here and really get into it every day,” he added. “It’s extraordinary.”
