Keith Urban Is Using Murals to Bring ‘Graffiti U’ Album to Life
Keith Urban blended two kinds of Tennessee art at Spotify's Fan First Graffiti U event in Nashville Monday (April 23).
Urban, who was the star of the event, performed a private show and held a short Q&A with the exclusive crowd (that included his wife, Nicole Kidman), but the country star's new music wasn’t the only art on display.
To complement Urban’s forthcoming album Graffiti U, which drops on Friday, April 27, the event showcased five large murals that were hand-crafted by five different Nashville artists. Each mural was dedicated to a song on Graffiti U: “Coming Home” (created by Nathan Brown) “Horses,” (created by Ty Christian) “You Can Steal My Thunder Anytime,” (created by Brian Wooden) “Love the Way it Hurts” (created by Eric “Mobe” Bass) and “My Wave” (created by Aaron Martin).
See the Graffiti U Murals:
The idea of graffiti-style murals and Urban’s album Graffiti U album is a no-brainer, especially after Urban’s explanation of his album’s origin.
“As all the songs were coming together, I was trying to feel a name that fit the way that the record felt,” Urban told the audience. “The last two albums were very energy based, so I chose Fuse and Ripcord ‘cause they had a good energy feeling to them, but this record felt like a border-artistic record and more free artistically. I was thinking the studio for me is literally like a blank canvas where I just come in with no real ideas. I just walk in, start playing music, write songs in the studio, build the record and the whole thing is very much like a wall — I’m just painting on it ..."
"So the word Graffiti kept coming to me because it felt what the process was like for me and the U was the audience, was the listener. So it was Graffiti You – that inclusive experience for us – and I just thought, well the first letter of my last time is U, I’ll just go with that instead," he says, laughing, "to really personalize it, so it became Graffiti U.”
Urban also performed a number of past and present songs at Monday's event, including the Ripcord hit “Wasted Time,” and recent releases “Female” and “Parallel Line,” in which he semi-serenaded/sang with wife Nicole Kidman.
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