Keith Urban is no stranger to dipping his toe into other musical genres, and the country hitmaker did just that with his latest YouTube cover. On Friday, Urban shared a video of himself performing pop star Dua Lipa’s recent hit “Don’t Start Now,” accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar as he sat in front of a group of lightbulbs.
“The instantly addictive and incredibly well written ‘Don’t Start Now’ by @dualipa !!” Urban wrote on Instagram of the song. “That line ‘don’t start caring about me now’ – SO relatable.” The singer’s acoustic guitar provided a country lean to the synth-heavy track, and Urban’s recognizable voice infused his trademark soul into the song, which appears on Lipa’s March 2020 album Future Nostalgia. The up-tempo pop song is a natural cover choice for Urban, who has been moving his music further into the genre with a number of his recent releases.
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Urban recently told Zane Lowe on Apple Music that he gets encouragement to explore genres from wife Nicole Kidman, who has inspired him to be more fearless when it comes to his music. “What I’ve learned from her is to be more fearless in artistry and go for the curious place that you want to go to as an artist,” he said. “Don’t question it.”
“You know, her whole thing is like, ‘I’m interested in that. I’m going to go over there,’” the 52-year-old explained. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, can I do it? Should I do it?’ None of that ever comes into it. She just goes towards something and I’m like, ‘Can you do that?’ She goes, ‘I don’t know, but I’m interested in that.’ That fearlessness, and it’s actually not even fearlessness. Fear doesn’t come into it. It’s only curiosity. It’s pure curiosity. She just goes without questioning it. That’s definitely had a big impact on my music in the last five, six years, particularly. Oh yeah. Yeah. I definitely married up.”
“She’s got great taste in music because it has no… It’s always visceral,” Urban added of his wife. “It’s just like, ‘I don’t know who the artist is. I don’t know what genre it is. I don’t know. I just love this song.’ Boom. That’s all that matters to her.” Urban’s new album, The Speed of Now Part 1, is due out on Sept. 18 and contains the already-released songs “God Whispered Your Name” and “Polaroid.”
