Keith Urban Just Released His Most Personal Song Ever

Keith Urban says the final song on his new High album is the most personal song he’s ever released.

“Break the Chain” is about evaluating how you were raised, and (to borrow from the bridge) taking the best and discarding the rest.

“We didn’t get to choose our family of origin or where we were born or how we were raised,” he tells Taste of Country. “None of us chose that. But it is my responsibility to either change that or just perpetuate it and keep it going into the next bunch of crap, you know what I mean?”

• High is Urban’s 12th studio album and his first since The Speed of Now Part 1 in 2020.
• “Messed Up as Me” is a Top 20 hit at country radio. The album also features a duet with Lainey Wilson called “Go Home W U.”
• Look for the full conversation next Wednesday (Sept. 25) on the Taste of Country Nights: On Demand podcast.

Related: Keith Urban + Nicole Kidman’s Daughters Are All Grown Up

“Break the Chain” was written with Marc Scibilia. Guitar and mandolin introduce Urban’s introspective lyrics: “Too late / Is it too late / For me to listen / for me to change.“

There’s nothing specific about the first verse or chorus, but by verse two, Urban seems to be recalling dark times from childhood. He’s talked about this before. A memorable interview with Rolling Stone Country in 2016 finds him remembering his complicated relationship with his father, an alcoholic.

“And the way he disciplined me,” Urban said eight years ago, “he seemed to have forgotten about it as he got older. I don’t think he was in denial, he genuinely had no recollection. ‘Hitting you? I never did that!'”

“Never safe / And never sure / What made him so mad at the world / And mad at me / I was just a kid / I won’t do the same,” he sings to end the second verse.

“That song just came, man,” Urban tells Taste of Country Nights host Evan Paul. “I had no intention of writing that title. Nothing about that song — I didn’t know any of that was inside of me, you know?”

“Apparently I’m still working through things.”

You’d be hard pressed to find a moment that approaches this kind of candor on one of Urban’s albums. He lives a life with wife Nicole Kidman and their daughters in private, rarely offering too much about their day-to-day routines or emotions.

Once in awhile he’ll open up. That article from 2016 is one example. “Break the Chain” is another.

“Like every kid, born into a family of some sort with whatever challenges that family has, mine was no different,” he tells ToC. “Going out into the world and figuring out how to be an adult and parts that I want to not continue of my raising, change the way things are done and break the chain — it’s a very hopeful song at the end.”

“It’s about, it’s never too late to change. It’s none of our fault where we came from, right?

“And it’s not too late / It’s never too late / To break the chain,” he sings before a long instrumental outro.

To celebrate the release of High, Urban shut down Lower Broadway for a free concert on Thursday night (Sept. 19).