Rating: 0/10

Keith Urban, you are so much better than this, and it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to write this review.

Honestly, this is insanely, shockingly bad. It’s an album where I was actually repeatedly taken aback by how awful each song turned out to be, a record where I kept hoping for some sort of saving grace, any glimpse of the talented, passionate artist Keith Urban can be and indeed used to be. If you asked me to name one modern country artist who has been criminally underrated or misrepresented by their current output, I’d direct you to Urban in a heartbeat–his first six solo records were solid, and I’ll stand by that. His last several have each at least carried hints of that talent. I expected this to be a disappointing album overall, but I did not imagine it would actually be one of the worst things I’ve ever heard, on the level of Walker Hayes and Sam Hunt. And you know what? In some ways, it’s worse when I have to say this about Keith Urban because I can’t say something like: Well, some of Sam Hunt’s music would be okay in pop, or Florida Georgia Line make some mindless music, but at least they’re being “authentic” to who they are and enjoying themselves. The thing is, this is not Urban, he knows better, he’s done better, and this is a pathetic attempt to stay relevant while losing many of his former core fans. It’s not even about whether this sounds like “real country”–it doesn’t by those terms, but Keith Urban was not particularly “real-country” sounding to begin with–it’s about the fact that it clearly doesn’t sound like Keith himself. I won’t even waste your time and mine debating the country qualities of it because there are too many other, and better, reasons why this album is terrible than how country it sounds.

The worst problem? The God-awful production that permeates this whole thing. There are some songs here, like “Same Heart” and “Way Too Long,” that actually don’t start out awful. There’s some decent writing here, and then it just gets buried in senseless, overproduced layers of crap until you can only pay attention to that element. Overproduced is not even the right word for this really. The production changes are so sporadic and pointless that it’s as if an eight-year-old broke into the recording studio and pressed every single button at random, and Keith thought it would be funny to send it out like that for human consumption. It’s not as if they layered too much pop sound or electronic beats or vocal effects–it’s not one thing, it’s all of them, and others, at different times, creating such a cacophony of distraction that it renders even the decent songs on paper unlistenable. “Same heart” actually sounds like two different songs from the verse to the chorus. “My Wave” probably wouldn’t have been a bad song if Keith had actually played it on his guitar, but instead it’s some sort of horrendously overproduced collaboration with Shy Carter. And we actually have beatboxing in “Never Comin’ Down,” which, in an album of horrifying material, may be the worst.

I said I didn’t hate “Female,” and actually, it’s one of the only songs here that doesn’t make me cringe. Its presence here is both made better by the fact it’s the only thing with some actual intelligence and maturity and good intentions in the verses and worse by the fact its chorus becomes somehow more stupid and the song itself so obviously opportunistic alongside the rest of this train wreck. As for actual female representation, we do have some; there’s Lindsay Ell in “Horses,” contributing about half a line…hey, Urban’s team, here’s a novel idea–release this to radio, so we can pretend that women are actually making progress when it goes to #1 automatically. You think that “half a line” is hyperbole? She literally only says, “run, run, run” a few times by herself…yes, that’s it. Any backup singer could have done that, and the women in “Female” who are not credited actually can be heard more, but if we feature Lindsay Ell on the track and then manipulate it up the charts, we can pretend we don’t have a tomato issue. Not to be unfair, Keith also has Kassi Ashton on “Drop Top,” and she actually gets a whole damn chorus. I mean, the song is like some 80’s pop tune about some girl at Coachella, but whatever. Ashton at least sings her part with some passion and energy. And of course he also has pop artist Julia Michaels participating for her obligatory four lines in the embarrassing Merle Haggard “Mama Tried” rip-off song known as “Coming Home,” so there’s that.

Speaking of which, while we’ve all been focused on how awful it is that he ripped off Merle, why don’t we take a second to point out that the rip-off is not even correct, or even on guitar? I mean, for God’s sake, Keith Urban is a phenomenal guitar player, and he couldn’t even play the damn riff on a guitar? Whether or not you think this album is country-sounding–it isn’t, let’s be fair–but regardless of semantics or genre or “real country” or whatever the hell you want to call it, can’t we all agree that Keith Urban is known more than anything for his guitar playing? He’s a great musician, and yet his guitar licks are nonexistent on this record. This is not just about what he’s doing to the country genre, it’s about the fact that this is an affront and an embarrassment to Keith Urban fans who fell in love with him for that sound. Not only that, but surely he enjoys that part of his career. Can he really be content with beatboxing instead of shredding, not even playing his guitar in a significant capacity once in awhile? Really?

As for the rip-offs and the mockery he actually is making of the country genre, “Coming Home” isn’t even the only instance of this. “Texas Time” is a less offensive but still obvious rip-off, this one of Don Williams’ “Tulsa Time.” Even despite that, this song is actually somewhat catchy and a decent pop track, except the eight-year-old hit the dying cow/vomiting guitar buttons simultaneously towards the end of this and managed to ruin it. Seriously, it sounds nothing short of piercing on headphones, and once again, it’s not a case of overproduction so much as a case of random, unnecessary, cacophonous production. I promise you, not every song on this is terrible by any means lyrically, but once they ran this through the blender of random sounds and cluttered beats, not one track here is actually listenable all the way through.

I tried to find some redeeming quality in this album. I tried to find some resemblance, some last vestiges of hope that the Keith Urban who gave us “But for the Grace of God” and “Making Memories of Us” is still in there somewhere. I tried to reconcile the man who sang “Raining on Sunday” with the one singing “Drop Top,” the one who made a career out of heartfelt songwriting and long guitar solos with the one now beatboxing and singing about Coachella. I wanted to find one good thing to say about this, and truthfully, I can’t. It’s not about country versus pop, and it’s not even completely about the legends whose music he’s defacing. It’s about the fact that Keith Urban has sold himself out completely and fantastically, has traded all shreds of dignity for fading relevancy, and has forsaken his talent and the things that make him unique as an artist in favor of pumping out the same generic crap as everyone else. If nothing else, Urban fans should be up in arms about the glaring and disgusting lack of Keith’s guitar on a fifteen-track album. Keith Urban fans, you deserve better. Country music, you deserve better. Keith Urban, you’re capable of delivering better, much better.

The Bad

The Horrifying