Keith Urban’s Album Title ‘Took On A Whole New Meaning’

When Keith Urban came up with the title of his upcoming album The Speed Of Now, it was 2019 and a very different world.

Keith told Variety, "I guess the title of the album has been the most asked question I’ve gotten, and that’s one of those crazy art-imitating-life, life-imitating-art moments. The title The Speed of Now came to me last year for multitudes of reasons, mostly just because I felt like everything was just careening almost out of control. Everywhere I went, it seemed like people were going faster, everything was moving faster, life was going faster. So it was a bit of commentary about the absurdity of where I felt like we were at."

He continued, "And God, fast forward to March and April of this year, where everything just ground to a halt. I was shell-shocked. And I’d said to a couple of friends of mine, 'I’m going to have to come up with a different album title.' And they said, why? I said, 'Well, this made sense last year.' They said, 'Yeah, but the speed of now is very different to what it was last year.' So I think people will have a different relationship with that title, which took on a whole new meaning."

Urban added, "And the songs within the record … Certainly there’s a huge amount of hope in the record. My albums have always leaned into the light as much as I can, because it’s how I try and live my life. So I think this record has a lot of buoyancy and a lot of hope in it."