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Keith Urban headlines at Country Crossings Keith Urban, along with Luke Bryan and Chris Stapleton, performs this weekend at Country Crossings Music Festival at The Expo in Central Point. [Photo courtesy of Last Word Features] Thursday Jul 27, 2017 at 8:00 AM Alan Sculley Last Word Features Keith Urban has released eight albums since he broke onto the American country music scene with his 1999 self-titled album. His music has evolved considerably over that span, going from the frequently acoustic, pop accented — and fairly conventional — country sound to the far more diverse, genre-blurring and rather synthetic sound of his current release, “Ripcord” — an album that has many listeners hearing Urban as the most musically adventurous of today’s arena-filling top tier of country stars. You won’t hear Urban sound at all dismissive of his early albums, even though his vocals are about the only thing that tie his earliest and his latest music together. To Urban, every album has been exactly what he intended — reflecting where he was in terms of musical interests and his songwriting at that time. “I can look back at all the albums I’ve made (including a 1991 effort he released in his homeland of Australia), and every one of them is very much a snapshot of where I was at that time in my life and the music I was listening to, the kind of music I was around and the way I wrote songs and the kind of racket I wanted to make once I got into the studio,” Urban says during a telephone interview. “So I don’t really look back and sort of cringe at any of those records because I go well, that’s just where I was,” he says. Once again, Urban says, he came into “Ripcord” with a good idea of the sound he was chasing — and it wasn’t just country. In particular, he wanted rhythm to be a stronger presence than ever in his music. To that end, while there is some country (“Break on Me” and “Boy Gets a Truck” are prime examples), much of “Ripcord” pushes toward pop and hip-hop in its sound and production. “Wasted Time” is built around a synthesizer sequence and a perky programmed rhythm track, while “Sun Don’t Let Me Down” has a big danceable groove, hooky pop chorus and even a guest rap from Pitbull. “The Fighter” (which features guest vocals by Carrie Underwood) has a little vintage Motown in its upbeat groove and sunny pop melody. Fans certainly like what Urban is doing. “Ripcord,” which debuted at No. 4 on the all-genre “Billboard” magazine Top 200 album chart after its release in May last year, has been well received by critics and so far has produced three No. 1 Country Airplay singles (“Break on Me,” “Wasted Time” and "Blue Ain't Your Color") as well as a No. 2 single wotj “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16.” Now “The Fighter” looks to be headed toward similar heights, having reached No. 2 on “Billboard’s Hot Country singles chart, while climbing into the Top 10 at Country Airplay. That puts "Ripcord" in line with Urban’s 2013 release, “Fuse,” which topped the Top 200 album chart and generated four No. 1 country singles. Urban, who is playing festivals and casinos this summer, has more than 20 No. 1 songs in his catalog. With more chart-toppers than he can fit into his show, he says he tends to play the hits that best flow together at his shows. He’s seeing his latest surge in his popularity translate to his touring business and the crowd response to his performances. “I can tell you right now, it’s been interesting watching the change over the last several years, where the new albums seem to have brought in a whole bunch of new people that don’t know any of the earlier material,” Urban says. “We’d be on the stage singing songs from even four records ago, and you can tell they don’t know those songs.” Urban sees several factors helping him reach so many new fans. The popularity of “Ripcord,” “Fuse” and his 2010 album, “Get Closer,” is certainly part of it. But Urban’s four-season stint as a judge on “American Idol” put him in front of a national television audience and his marriage of 10 years to actress Nicole Kidman has made him a regular in tabloids and on social media. “It’s a combination of things,” he says. “I think the ‘Fuse’ album was a new chapter for me. I went into the studio focused on creating a new chapter in my life musically, and the album preceding that, which was ‘Get Closer,’ I feel was a bookend album to that. It was sort of the end of that part of my career. And ‘Fuse’ was like the first album of the next phase. Of course, it coincided with being on ‘American Idol.’ It coincided with a lot of things happening musically at the time — obviously the explosion of the internet, people discovering music through streaming, in addition to radio play. So I think everything coincided with the right record at the right time and it brought a whole new audience. "And ‘Ripcord’ is just the next progression on from that,” he says.