When Keith Urban decided he wanted to release the Merle Haggard-inspired tune, “Coming Home,” on his latest Graffiti U album, he had no idea how homesick the song would make him.
The Aussie, who used the intro to Haggard’s hit “Mama Tried” as the muse for “Coming Home,” reveals that the song, which says, “There’s a place that I know where they all know me / I gotta get back now to the ones who love me / Wrap myself around you, never let you go /There’s nothin’ in the world that feels like / The place that I know where they all know me,” made him surprisingly nostalgic for Down Under.
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“I didn’t want to just shove [the riff] into a song,” Keith acknowledges (quote via Nash Country Daily). “A lot of times when you hear a sample [from another song], it’s just kind of shoved into the middle of a song as it is, and I wanted something a little bit more artistic with it. J.R. Rotem, who co-wrote ‘Coming Home’ and co-produced it, he took the sample from the original recording of ‘Mama Tried,’ and then manipulated it a bit and wrote these chords around it.”
After Rotem was finished, Urban began working on the rest of the song, which became more his musings than an attempt at a musical masterpiece.
“I wrote that chorus out, almost stream of conscious,” Urban says. “But, it was really that lick from Merle that made me miss home, think about home, growing up in Australia—all of it just came flooding back and it was that riff that triggered it, so it was a really important part of the song for me.”
Urban, who grew up listening to Haggard, is drawn back to his early years every time he hears “Mama Tried.”
“Hearing that rolling Haggard guitar lick sparked memories of my childhood – and my dream to
come to America.” Urban shares. “I knew right then the story (of the song) was about the
struggles of being in a city where your dreams have brought you, but far from your home –
wherever, whomever and whatever that is for each of us.”
Urban will kick off his Graffiti U World Tour on June 15, with Kelsea Ballerini serving as his opening act, and Lindsay Ell joining him on the Canadian leg of the tour. Find dates on Urban’s website.
Julia Michaels joins Urban on “Coming Home.” Download the single on iTunes.
Photo Credit: Instagram/keithurban
