Keith Urban will have an entirely new record, out soon. The country music hitmaker reveals that his next project is already completed, although he isn’t ready to share it with the world, at least not yet.
“It’s so frustrating sitting on so much,” Urban told Access Hollywood. “It is a whole album of new music that I’m jonesing to get out, but it won’t be until early across mid to next year.”
Urban has been busy with other projects in addition to new music, including his Keith Urban: The Las Vegas Residency at Zappos Theater in Planet Hollywood, which wraps up later this month, much to Urban’s dismay.
“It’s been a blast,” Urban shared. “We’ve had so much fun. It’s going to be a bummer to finish it off. We’ve only got a handful of shows left in the next couple of weeks. The audience has been amazing. If you came out, thank you so much. [It’s] wild, unpredictable, and it’s just been everything I could have imagined.”
Urban’s forthcoming new album has been a labor of love, and a strenuous one at that, for the singer. He revealed earlier this year that he had almost completed an entire record, which he ultimately scratched when he realized it wasn’t the record he wanted to make.
“I started working on an album at the beginning of last year,” Urban told the Associated Press. “I spent the better part of the year in and out of the studio while I was touring, only to get to probably February of this year and sort of look at it all and feel like it really wasn’t a group of songs that was speaking to me. There was another album in me, I guess. It was a weird feeling. I actually never had that happen with a record, where I bailed on two-thirds of it. I probably kept about three out of those 12 or so songs.”
Although Urban was overwhelmed at the idea of redoing the project, once he committed to it, he quickly realized that it was the correct decision for him.
“It was the worst feeling of like, ‘Okay, it’s back to the drawing board. I got to get in there and start writing some songs,’” Urban conceded. “And so really from February all the way through to now, the whole record just took a whole different direction when I had time to write. It was the missing heart of the body of songs that I’d recorded. And everything started to pop, and all three of the next single contenders we’ve got right now, I’m a writer on all three of them.”
The New Zealand-born singer received one of the highest honors of his career last month, when he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
“Being invited into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame is hands down one of the highest honors that’s ever happened to me,” Urban told his record label. “I’ve always loved writing songs. I’ve always loved great songwriters, and, this is a songwriting town. I mean, first the song always. The song is the very first thing. To be in this group, this incredible group of songwriters is a bit surreal. Honestly, it’s probably still sinking in.”
After he was formally inducted, the father of two spoke out on social media about the honor, and especially being inducted by the incomparable Dolly Parton.
“Thank you to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame for inviting me into the family,” Urban said at the time. “It was the songwriting community that I was first welcomed into when I arrived in Nashville. They told me I could choose someone to induct me in and I never imagined she’d say yes. Thank you Dolly Parton for saying ‘yes!’ It means the world to me.”
Find music and tour dates at KeithUrban.com.
