Keith Urban has been working on some very different-sounding music with musician and producer Nile Rodgers. Urban is testing out what Rodgers describes as “EDM-country.”
Rodgers told Yahoo’s Ram Country, “I really pushed him to sing at the top of his range. Keith was nervous about it; he wanted to do another take. But I told him I loved the way it sounds.”
When asked about how Urban’s country fans will respond to the music, Rodgers admitted, “His fans may have some kind of problem at first, but my biggest records have always been like that. A lot of people, the only record they ever bought by David Bowie was Let’s Dance. That’s at least (seven) million albums — he’d never sold anything near that before. So his fanbase got angry: ‘This sucks! This is not Ziggy Stardust! That’s not Scary Monsters!’ But it was huge because it spoke to a broader audience. I think a record like this will speak to a broader audience (for Urban), and the country people will come around.”
In other Keith Urban news, Page Six reports that the guitarist for the one-hit-wonder ’70s rock band Player has filed a lawsuit against the singer for ripping off the band’s name for Urban’s guitar lesson kit available on the Home Shopping Network called Keith Urban Player lesson system. The guitarist, Peter Beckett, played on the group’s 1978 hit “Baby Come Back.”
FAST FACTS
- Urban and Rodgers met for the first time back in February at a pre-Grammy party in Los Angeles where Rodgers was being honored with the Producers and Engineers Wind Award.
- Urban and Rodgers have been recording the new music at Rodgers’ home studio in Connecticut.
(The Pulse of Radio)
