Conventional wisdom holds that angst, broken hearts and tortured love affairs make the best songwriting fodder. Keith Urban, on the other hand, has found a way to turn his happy relationship and family life into fertile musical ground.
Listen to the new album 'Get Closer'
His new album, "Get Closer," is full of songs inspired by wife Nicole Kidman and their 2-year-old daughter, Sunday Rose, and it's clear from titles like "Right on Back to You" and the album's first single, "Put You in a Song," that, these days, Urban is finding just as much inspiration in happiness as other artists do in heartbreak.
"I just write from energy," Urban says. "Whatever the strongest energy is at the time, that tends to be where I write from." He says whatever emotions he's experiencing while he's writing and recording come out in the songs "in a very organic, pure way."
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But sometimes it isn't until the album is finished that he gets a sense of his prevailing mood during its creation. "It's often the first time I get to even see a bit of a snapshot of my life," he says. "As this record was coming together in the studio, I was really grateful for the very apparent joy that was through the whole record. It was really lovely for me to see that."
The eight-song set centers around themes of love and relationships (a Target-only version of the album contains three additional songs), and Urban says he has "a close, close connection and relationship with all of these songs, even the ones I didn't write." The album, released Nov. 16, is Urban's sixth as a solo artist since dismantling his former band, the Ranch.
The new album's emotional centerpiece is the track "Right on Back to You," which Urban wrote with Darrell Brown. It's also the song that inspired the album title. In it, the character ("which, of course, is me," Urban says) is fleeing from a relationship, then pulls the car over to consider his actions, and ultimately turns around and goes back home.
"The guy in the song is who I've been over the years, somebody that's always running from love, from intimacy, from being vulnerable," Urban says. "Slowly but surely over the years, my beautiful wife has been extraordinary in helping me realize the power in getting closer.
"In those moments where I might pull away or want to run, every time I've done that recently, instead of the running thing -- which the guy is doing in the song -- [I've had] the realization [of] 'Why do I keep running? What am I running from?' It's not because I don't love this person. The truth is, it's because I love them SO much that I'm terrified of being so exposed and vulnerable to this person," Urban says. "But that's really what love's all about. It's about total and absolute courage and surrender into somebody."
The character in the song has a similar epiphany. "The breakthrough comes in recognizing that in the moment of pulling away, you [can] actually get closer and move to a new place," Urban says. "I've done that."
Kidman not only inspired much of the material on "Get Closer," she's pictured in the background on the album cover as well. Urban says it just felt appropriate to include her in the artwork, given the album's theme.
"Because of the nature of the record ... it seemed like an obvious thing to have her come and do," says Urban. "I'm glad she was a part of it."
When it came down to choosing final cover art for the album, however, Urban says he couldn't decide between two images, so he took the choices to his fans and had them vote via Facebook.
"I'd like to say it was a genius marketing ploy," Urban says of the contest, "but it was actually born of a real situation where we had these two covers that both really suited the record.
I could not pick between the two photos." The image that didn't win became the album's back cover shot. It also features Kidman (or at least her arms and torso).
Urban also had his fans in mind when choosing one of the three Target bonus tracks, a cover of Santana's "Winning." It's a song Urban says will be fun to slip into the set list to surprise his audiences from time to time. It's also a song he's always enjoyed, particularly the guitar parts on the original.
"I love the sentiment of it," Urban says, and "it's certainly a song that lyrically fits very well with this record and my life, too. It was a blast to get in the studio and play it."
"Winning" joins Urban's growing list of fun yet semi-obscure cover songs, which also includes Steve Forbert's "Romeo's Tune" (from the 2007 "Keith Urban: Greatest Hits" set) and David Dundas' "Jeans On" (from "Golden Road").
Like many Nashville-based musicians, Urban lost nearly his entire guitar collection when a popular storage facility filled with water during the area's devastating May floods. He estimates that 50 of his guitars were under water for four days. While a few were ultimately salvaged and restored, during the recording of "Get Closer" he was forced to use new or borrowed guitars, something he says shook him out of his comfort zone in the studio a bit, and helped keep the album sounding fresh.
"There was a lot of liberation for me as a guitar player to grab a hold of instruments that were new to me and express [myself] differently, because every guitar pulls something different out of a player," he says. "That was certainly the case with this record."
It's now been 10 years since Urban had his first No. 1 hit ("But for the Grace of God"), and nine years since he won the Country Music Association's Horizon Award. In that time, he's earned three Grammy Awards and released five albums that have all been platinum or multiplatinum sellers.
Since those early days of his career, he says, his perspective as a songwriter is what has changed the most about him. "Early on, I was writing songs about the guy I wanted to be, a lot of ideological songs," he says. Now, he writes more about the man he has become.
"I find that today I'm writing about life [from] a much more 'in it' position," he continues. "It's where I am today, [and] it's really gratifying for me to be in that place.
"There's a comfort and a bit more clarity for me in the process of writing songs and trying to articulate my heart," he adds. "It's still not easy. It's a work in progress. I'm still learning so much, but with each record it's getting distilled closer to its essence."
Veteran entertainment journalist Phyllis Stark has covered music and the music industry for two decades. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and sites, including Radio-Info.com, where she authors the newsletter Stark Country. She previously was Nashville bureau chief at Billboard magazine.
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