Keith Urban will kick off his Graffiti U World Tour on Friday, June 15, with Kelsea Ballerini serving as his opening act. While Ballerini has already admitted she’s a big fan of Urban, the Aussie reveals the admiration goes both ways.
“We talked about touring [together before] and not enough of the dates lined up for us to do it, and they just did this time,” says Urban. “One of those stars lining up moments. I just felt musically it’s such a great compatibility of fusion that we both sort of work in. It’s certainly not pure country, neither of us. We obviously grew up with contemporary country influences, pop country influences, and I just felt that it was a great, great collaborative blend of the two of us. I always think about my audiences too and who are they going to respond to, and I think they’ll love Kelsea.”
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Urban will undoubtedly play songs from his recent Graffiti U album, but he also has songs from his previous nine studio albums, making it difficult to narrow down his set list.
“I’m the indecisive guy looking at a buffet with way too much food, ’cause of the mountain of it.,” admits the singer. “‘I’m not too sure, and so I’ll just take it all and I’ll figure it out at the table.’ That’s a little bit of what the set list looks like right now. It’s a buffet. It’s a conundrum because I want to play what the audience wants to hear, obviously, and there’s a mix of people in the audience. You’ve got new people that have never seen us live, and they’re hoping you do X song, whatever it might be. It could be ‘Kiss a Girl,’ it could ‘Sweet Thing,’ it could be ‘You’ll Think of Me,’ it could be ‘Days Go By.’ It could be so many songs.
“And then you’ve got other people who’ve seen us hundreds and hundreds of times and they’re like, ‘Please don’t do that song again. We’ve heard that a million times. We want to hear more of the new ones,’” he continues. “So, it’s a beautiful challenge that I feel very blessed, very, very blessed to have, and at the end of the day I’ll put together a set list that feels energy and emotion and thematically and musically and every other way right from top to bottom, covering as much as we can without playing for four hours. It’s also a part of the reason why we didn’t take out a third act on the tour. We’re just taking out Kelsea and us. It gives us more time to play.”
Find a list of all of Urban’s upcoming shows at KeithUrban.net.
Photo Credit: Instagram/keithurban
