Keith Urban dropped a new video for his current single, “Coming Home,” which features vocals from Julia Michaels.
The new clip, which was directed by Andy Hines, takes viewers on a surreal journey as Keith seamlessly moves through different settings—bedroom, field, house, cab—before ultimately ending up at a club where he watches himself perform with Julia.
“The concept for the video was really Andy Hines’ idea,” said Keith. “He suggested the heightened reality that we see in the video, which keeps it more like a dream—an idea, more than an actuality. It was also important to have Julia there—she’s great energy to be around and I love singing with her, so I wanted us to be onstage at the same time to capture that.”
Keith tiptoed through hallowed ground when he decided to record and release, “Coming Home,” a tune that features a riff from one of country music’s most sacred songs, Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” Even though Keith reached out to Merle’s widow, Theresa Haggard, and son, Ben, to secure their blessings, he was still nervous about releasing the tune.
“I was very much [nervous] . . . I didn’t want to just shove [the riff] into a song,” said Keith. “A lot of times when you hear a sample [from another song], it’s just kind of shoved into the middle of a song as it is, and I wanted something a little bit more artistic with it. J.R. Rotem, who co-wrote ‘Coming Home’ and co-produced it, he took the sample from the original recording of ‘Mama Tried,’ and then manipulated it a bit and wrote these chords around it. When he had done that and I sat in the studio and listened to the music, I just . . . I wrote that chorus out, almost stream of conscious. But, it was really that lick from Merle that made me miss home, think about home, growing up in Australia—all of it just came flooding back and it was that riff that triggered it, so it was a really important part of the song for me.”
“Coming Home,” which was co-penned by Keith, J.R. Rotem, Julia Michaels, Nicolle Galyon and Merle Haggard, is currently No. 12 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart after 10 weeks.
Watch Keith’s new video below.
