LOS ANGELES – On Thursday, the Nashville Songwriters Corridor of Fame introduced that Keith City was amongst its class of 2023 inductees. The information arrived dwell from Columbia Studio A, only a block and a half from the place the nation music famous person stayed when he first landed within the Music Metropolis from Australia in 1989, hoping to make a reputation for himself.
“It’s truly surreal,” Keith City advised The Related Press.
He stated that if somebody advised him, then, that he would someday be inducted within the corridor, “I just wouldn’t have believed it.”
City spoke to AP shortly after the announcement to speak in regards to the craft of songwriting, his forthcoming studio album out in 2024 — the longest break he has taken between albums for the reason that begin of his profession, heading again to Las Vegas for an prolonged residency and past.
Solutions are edited for readability and brevity.
AP: In your speech on the Corridor announcement, you talked about first coming to Nashville in 1989 — does this award will let you replicate on these early days?
URBAN: I nonetheless drive down sixteenth and into Music Row and it’s like time evaporates. And I’m proper again, driving down the very same avenue to go to a songwriting session.
I used to be writing 5 days every week at MCA publishing over there, and on one hand, it was an excruciatingly powerful time for me as a result of it wasn’t actually how I wrote songs: sitting in a room with a whole stranger, a few authorized pads, and acoustic guitars in a windowless room. That is form of the way it was executed again then.
It was such a coaching floor for me, I assume, as a result of I used to be form of compelled into an surroundings that wasn’t pure to me. However I discovered a lot from it about songwriting. As powerful because it was, it’s in all probability the place I discovered probably the most about songwriting.
AP: And that is an award about songwriting — notably noteworthy, given the collaborative nature of writing rooms in Nashville and nation music.
URBAN: To be acknowledged as a author is extraordinary, as a result of I’ve at all times liked songwriting. After I began actually writing poetry at school, and I began writing songs simply out of a need to not be caught, at all times singing any individual else’s track, enjoying in cowl bands, and realizing “This is going nowhere for me. I want to write my own songs.”
Ed Sheeran was requested, “How do you write a good song?” And he stated, “Start with the bad ones.” And I feel that’s just like the truest remark about songwriting. You bought to get the actually lame, mediocre ones out of the way in which so you will get to the stronger, higher ones. Gosh, I wrote not that way back with Tyler Hubbard on a track known as “Dancing in the Country,” and that session was nice. I’m always studying about songwriting from my collaborations.
AP: What can we count on out of your subsequent album?
URBAN: I’ve received one other single popping out within the subsequent couple of months; we’re attempting to decide on one among these explicit three proper now. A lot of the album, I’d say, is completed. I feel I’ve received one principally another track to document from the bottom up after which a complete bunch of others that simply have to be blended. I am within the ultimate levels of touchdown the airplane proper now. An album will come out someday subsequent yr.
AP: How would you describe it?
URBAN: I began engaged on an album firstly of final yr. I spent the higher a part of the yr out and in of the studio whereas I used to be touring, solely to get to in all probability February of this yr and kind of have a look at all of it and really feel prefer it actually wasn’t a gaggle of songs that was chatting with me. There was one other album in me, I assume. It was a bizarre feeling. I really by no means had that occur with a document, the place I bailed on two thirds of it. I in all probability saved about three out of these 12 or so songs.
It was the worst feeling of like, “Okay, it’s back to the drawing board. I got to get in there and start writing some songs.” And so actually from February throughout to now, the entire document simply took a complete totally different path after I had time to put in writing. It was the lacking coronary heart of the physique of songs that I’d recorded. And every part began to pop, you recognize, and all three of the subsequent single contenders we’ve received proper now, I’m a author on all three of them.
AP: Does fatherhood seem as a theme on the brand new album?
URBAN: I’ve by no means written about that; it doesn’t converse to me from a writing standpoint fairly that approach, I feel, it’s in my spirit. I really like songs about hope, wild longing, working by means of issues, and simply sheer, senseless enjoyable. At this stage there’s one track that may in all probability end the album, it is known as “Break the Chain,” and that’s in all probability probably the most private track, out of every part.
AP: You are headed again to Vegas for a residency in November. What about that efficiency format speaks to you?
URBAN: There’s a bit bit extra intimacy that brings a unique connection, I feel, between me and the viewers. There’s additionally the manufacturing you could construct, that doesn’t need to bodily be capable of get out and in of vehicles each night time, so it liberates potential for what we are able to design. That’s one huge plus for me.
After which there’s the problem each night time. You’ve received a variety of followers there, however you’ve additionally received a variety of simply curious folks, people who come to Vegas they usually’re like, “Okay, who’s on what’s on? What show should we go to?” It is the job of getting these folks to be part of this second. It takes me proper again to the membership days once you stroll out on stage, and nobody knew who you had been. Nobody may care much less that you simply’re the band enjoying within the nook, and also you’ve simply received to seize all people’s consideration. Vegas is a bit bit like that for me. It is thrilling.
AP: And I’ve to ask — there was a viral video you took on the Taylor Swift Eras tour the place you by accident caught Phoebe Bridgers and Bo Burnham kissing. Did you ever hear again from them?
URBAN: No, I by no means heard again from them. However sorry Phoebe? Sorry Bo? Query Marks? I felt horrible. Flawed place, unsuitable time.
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