Keith Urban Tops ‘Billboard’ Country Albums Chart With ‘The Speed of Now Part 1’

Keith Urban has scored another No. 1 atop Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart with his latest album, The Speed of Now Part 1, which arrived on Sept. 18. It also debuted at No. 7 on the all-genre Billboard 200, and Nielsen Music/MRC Data reports that the album moved 39,646 equivalent units. The Speed of Now Part 1 also opened at No. 1 in Urban’s home country of Australia.

The album is Urban’s seventh No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, following Be Here (2004), Love, Pain & The Whole Crazy Thing (2006), Defying Gravity (2009), Fuse (2013), Ripcord (2016) and Graffiti U (2018). “I’m just… really looking forward to everybody getting to hear the album top to bottom, ’cause there’s no one song that really sums up the record,” the Grammy winner told Taste of Country. “There’s a reason why there’s the songs, as many of those as there is, on this record; there’s a reason for all those, and I’m looking forward to people getting to go on that journey.”

The Speed of Now Part 1 is 16 songs long and features multiple collaborations including “One Too Many,” Urban’s duet with Pink, which the duo performed at the ACM Awards this month. Urban Zane Lowe on Apple Music that after “getting this thing sounding good and feeling good,” he “had to find a good duet partner” and has “always loved” Pink’s voice.

“She’s one of the greats and I don’t mean that just throwaway,” he said. “I mean, literally, she’s a singer’s singer. I can’t imagine any singer disagreeing with that. She’s the real deal and she’s a great storyteller, and I think that’s what sets her apart from so many other people that have got good voices. She’s an incredible storyteller. You can feel all of her humanity when she sings, so she was just perfect for this. Everything that she does, she’s committed, she doesn’t half a— it. She’s all in. I love that about her.”

Urban has been doing the majority of his promotion for The Speed of Now Part 1 from home, answering “yes and no” when Lowe asked him if this release feels different.

“It feels a little different because we’re not going to the normal places to play,” he explained. “We’re not going to do certain appearances at certain places, and even radio visits or just interview visits, or flying somewhere, and doing this and going over to Germany to set the record up there, and Europe and down to Australia, everywhere. We’re going everywhere, but never leaving the house, which is so 2020.”