ABC/Image Group LAGraffiti U is the first album Keith Urban has recorded predominantly in his home studio in Nashville. He admits that likely didn’t affect the album in a huge way — though it may have inspired its title.
“The studio I have at home has huge windows,” he explains. “The studio’s flooded with natural light, and I record during the day. So if it informed anything on the record, it’s probably… the spirit: just liberated and feeling like I can just express, musically create.”
“I wasn’t critiquing anything or second-guessing anything,” Keith goes on. “It was very free-flowing, which is why the title started to come to me, more and more.”
Graffiti U is neither a song title or a lyric on the record — it’s a phrase Keith invented.
“It is very personal expression,” he says of the album. “It’s art, it’s graffiti. And the ‘you’ was the audience… the listener.”
“So it was Graffiti You, and then I thought, when I saw it written, ‘Why don’t I just go with the first letter of my last name, instead of the word you?’ That’s the inclusiveness of the experience.”
Working at home, Keith shared every step of the process with wife Nicole Kidman. Their daughters, on the other hand, are less impressed.
“It’s just another day of work for Dad…” he laughs.
“Nic, she hears all the songs as they’re happening,” Keith reveals. “‘Cause I get sent a lot of songs too, so she hears all of it: things that are being written, things that I’m considering, things that get recorded and then tossed out to the side. And then other ones that come back again.”
“Yeah, she lives this album with me, while it’s being made, for sure.”
Graffiti U is new in stores and online today.
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