Keith Urban could have asked anyone to join him on "Go Home W U," from his latest HIGH album. But for Urban, it was an easy choice to ask Lainey Wilson to join him on the uptempo, feel-good track.
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"Lainey? She's got swagger for days," Urban tells Inked. "We wrote it back in 2020 when bars went [dormant] and we were missing live good times. So, we just created that world ourselves."
"I love Lainey's voice; to hear her sing — you just know who she is," he adds. "She can make herself at home anywhere, and that's why people love her."
"Go Home W U" is just one of the very personal songs on HIGH, Urban's first record since The Speed of Now Part 1 came out in 2020.
"I've lived a lot of lives through my music," Urban explains. "Every album is a blank canvas, but they're also an accurate portrait of who I am at that moment. Between some albums, I haven't changed much. But between others, I've changed radically."
Keith Urban's High and Alive World Tour
Urban will kick off his High and Alive World Tour in May, joined by Chase Matthew, Alana Springsteen and Karley Scott Collins. But two people who won't be with him will be his bass player and music director Jerry Flowers, and multi-instrumentalist Nathan Barlowe.
Fortunately, Urban has some time before his tour begins, which he reveals he clearly needs.
"I'm in between a typical band structure right now. I haven't put together a band for the tour yet. I dismantled the band I had and I'm rebuilding a new one but I haven't built it yet," Keith reveals on Q with Tom Power. "We had a club show that came before I had a chance to build me band so we had a fill-in drummer ... and my keyboard player played bass, kind of like the Doors."
"I had to keep reminding him to go for it because we'd be playing a song and I'm like 'Where's the low end?'" he adds with a laugh. "And I'd realize that the keyboard player has forgotten that he's got to play bass too," he says.
Urban has a Top 40 hit with "Straight Line." He will resume the second half of his HIGH in Vegas Las Vegas residency on Friday, February 14. All of Urban's music and upcoming shows can be found at KeithUrban.com.
