Keith Urban loves making music, but when he’s not behind a microphone, one of his favorite ways to unwind is, perhaps surprisingly, behind the wheel – and not necessarily driving one of his fancy sports cars.
“I love driving,” Urban reveals. “I know that sounds like such a mundane thing but I’ve always loved driving. It’s such a cathartic thing for me. I love driving all different kinds of things: trucks, cars, big, small, fancy, not fancy. It doesn’t matter. It’s just very cathartic for me. Some people go skiing for that cathartic thing. Some people run a triathalon. Some people go fishing. I go driving. That’s what I do.”
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Urban also loves making music, even though that’s also his day job.
“I know that sounds weird, but I do that for recreation but it’s just because I love recording,” he adds. “I really do.”
Most of the driving Urban will do over the next few months will be outside of his hometown of Nashville. The 51-year-old is currently headlining his Graffiti U Tour, where he is joined by Kelsea Ballerini for the United States leg, and Lindsay Ell for his Canadian dates.
“It’s such a long beautiful line of people I’ve watched and learned from,” Urban told CMT. “To be in any position to give that back in any way is a great feeling.”
Urban’s current single, “Coming Home,” is about how he longs for the feeling of home wherever he is.
“I was out in LA, working with Julia Michaels,” Urban says of Michaels, who both co-wrote and sings on “Coming Home.” “We were talking about why you need to come home, physically, sometimes. And she said, ‘Well I know it’s only one call away, but it’s not the same.’ I was so taken by how simple that line is, how just incredibly simple it is, and yet that summed up the entire song’s spirit right there.”
“Coming Home” is the third single from Graffiti U, but the most important on the album, according to Urban.
“For me, ‘Coming Home’ as a song and a single really sets the tone of the album,” Urban explains. “The elements that I wanted to somehow all weave together, as a song and also as a record too, turning it into a record, for me came together on ‘Coming Home.’ So sonically it represents what the record is about, diversity on the record, sonically, and then thematically it’s very much my journey. It really feels like my life in a lot of ways.”
Find a list of all of Urban’s upcoming shows at KeithUrban.net.
Photo Credit: Getty images/Tim Mosenfelder
