Hear Keith Urban’s Brand-New Single, ‘Coming Home’, Featuring Julia Michaels
After teasing the brand-new track on Monday (March 19), Keith Urban has unveiled his first single from his upcoming new album, Graffiti U. Readers can press play above to hear the track, which features pop singer-songwriter Julia Michaels.
Merle Haggard fans might find something familiar in "Coming Home": The upbeat new tune samples his iconic song "Mama Tried," and "the Hag" receives a writing credit on Urban's track. The song's other writers are Urban, JR Rotem, Michaels and Nicolle Galyon; Rotem and Urban co-produced it.
""Coming Home" started with an idea I had of using the intro of one of my favorite Haggard songs, "Mama Tried," to build an entirely new song around it. Then, I took the idea to JR Rotem and he put some chords around it," Urban explains in a press release (quote via Taste of Country). "I called Theresa Haggard and Ben Haggard to play them what we’d been working on. It was important to me to have their blessing — and I’m so grateful that they love the song."
Aside from the Haggard sampling, though, this ain't your mama's country song, so don't be fooled by that static-tinged piano at the very beginning. Hand claps and a distorted electronic riff create the melody over which Urban sings.
"The place that I know that they all know me / I gotta get back now / To the ones who love me," goes the verse of "Coming Home." "Wrap myself around you, never let you go / There's nothin' in the world that feels like coming home ..."
Michaels makes her entrance in the song's bridge: "Yeah, I know it's only one call away / But it's not the same," she sings, before adding harmonies throughout the end of the track.
In mid-January, Urban announced the forthcoming Graffiti U, though he's mostly been tight-lipped about details since then. In addition to "Parallel Line," an Australia-only single released in January, Urban shared three other new songs -- "Texas Time," "Same Heart" and "Steal My Thunder" -- during his Graffiti U announcement show at Exit / In in Nashville.
Urban's Graffiti U World Tour, announced during that Exit / In gig, will begin on June 15 in St. Louis, Mo., and run through early November. A release date for Graffiti U has yet to be set.
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