Urbane Sophistication Fallacies
In which Joe is struck by parallels and contrasts and change. Also a pun.
Many variables led to the anointing of rock as the dominant sound of the 2000s. Think of softer pop-rock influenced country acts like Rascal Flatts. Others borrowed from a more hard rock style like artists like Eric Church and Montgomery Gentry who added more muscular tones to the country landscape. The decline of AAA rock radio and the defection of many former rock executives to Nashville inevitably led to many dissatisfied rock fans tuning into country stations to get their fix in a way that the shrinking 2000s rock scene couldn’t provide. These executives naturally leaned towards a sound pleasing to the new listeners and the tenor of mainstream country radio changed in response.
Keith Urban is a polarizing figure in country music. Perhaps no figure so singularly represents the modern country music identity crisis as does Urban. His early music in Nashville was a relatively safe energetic brand of what would now be termed neo-traditional country. It was actually a smoothly produced style that owed as much to pop hooks as it did country instrumentation. Listen to early Kenny Chesney and the similarities will be quite apparent. As the 2000s beckoned, Urban updated his sound for the new millennium. Arguably the best pop-country album of the era, Golden Road ushered in new levels of fame and acclaim. His new sonic template leaned hard into the trends rippling through Nashville. The fiddles were dropped in favor of a more overt rock sound driven by layers of pulsating guitars ripped straight from a Tom Petty album. His unique take on the sound included vibrant banjo riffs and –not without exception- tastefully mixed drum loops. Songs like Somebody Like You and You Look Good in My Shirt were smash hits and along with his well received live performances, he successfully reached the top of the genre.
His next few albums all followed along in this vein, merging an energetic pop-rock base with flourishes from more traditional country instrumentation. As the 2010s dawned, a new breed of pop-country hit the airwaves. The dominant sound of the new landscape leaned hard in the direction of EDM and r&b and Urban attempted a pivot. His 2013 album Fuse, as evinced from the title tried to merge the radio friendly guitar driven sounds of his previous discography with the heavy layer of electronica and modern pop. An example of this is his attempt at a wildly over produced pop anthem, although more organic then the electronic house music on the pop top 100, Even the Stars Fall 4 U not only did the cutesy trendy title thing, but it heavily borrowed from the most hoary cliché of early 2010s pop with its embrace of the Millenial Whoop (the omnipresent woah-woahing in the popular music of the time). The faux r&b tones on Cop Car (soon bested by a cover from southern pop darling Sam Hunt) were another harbinger of the post-bro pop-country soon to come. The following albums (Ripcord, Graffiti U, and Speed of Now) all followed similar grafting of up to date pop concepts with an ever shrinking percentage of the old Urban signature sound. Amid criticism about abandonment of his sonic style and vague fidelity to “Country Music” Urban doubled down every succeeding album.
The party line is that Urban simply wanted to explore more varied and complex genre melding with up to date templates that would maintain freshness in the new southern pop landscape of contemporary country. His EDM/bluegrass/arena rock single Wasted Time off of Ripcord certainly feels like a decent example of (awkward and inorganic) genre melding that flew to the top of the Country Airplay charts.
As a fan of his 2000s material, it somewhat pains me to report that Keith’s experimental 2010s artistically doesn’t pass muster. Unlike the conceptually intriguing moray into electro-pop fusion promised, the actual result most often resembled out of date electronic beats overlayed with minimum effort vocals and token instrumentals. With Urban’s place in the radio machine well established, to nobody’s surprise the number one hits kept on flowing. In stark contrast to his commercial success, within critical and fan circles a strongly negative perspective began to dominate the narrative. Hackneyed “tribute” riffs to legends such as Merle Haggard and Don Williams in thumping electronic dance pop tracks especially received extreme critical backlash. The overwhelming image of Keith Urban now is either a fond nostalgia for his original material and/or extreme distaste for his most recent work.
All this leads me back to Golden Road. As the magnum opus of his career, I think it strategic to analyze and see what can be learned and perhaps applied to put Urban back onto the golden road he once occupied.
The last track on the project is a surprising closer. You’re Not My God is a dark autobiographical track delving into the struggles Keith had with narcotics addiction. It is a surprising addition to a mostly summery upbeat pop-country album. In his inimitable early 2000s style, synthetic drum loops are elegantly mixed with organic instrumentation. His signature upbeat banjo is repurposed here with a darker picking style and adds a melancholy tinge that is equal parts hopeful and hopeless. It is a masterpiece of interlaying parts with the subtle vocal inflections and harmonies acting as the cherry on top. It’s a superb melding of various elements in a way that would make any artist and producer proud. The track ends with a long moment of silence- about two minutes worth- and then ends off with a rarity in the modern age, the hidden track. It’s a cute ditty entitled The One Chord Song. The good cheer practically oozes off this little jingle which is entirely in- you guessed right- one chord.
There’s a common trope in the world of tech reviewers about intuitive software. Overly complex software is maligned and more simple and straightforward approaches in software are typically viewed as more desirable. Realistically the idea of intuitive software is a misnomer. No software is inherently intuitive in the technical sense. In smartphone software, a war was waged for years between Apple and its gesture based navigation systems and Android with its trusty button based navigation system. As things turned out, Android eventually shifted over to its own gesture based system. For the short time that the two methodologies were contrasted, the basic arguments boiled down to “fluid gestures are more intuitive” or “straightforward buttons are more intuitive”.
Arguably neither are. In the proverbial raised on a desert island hypothetical, it is doubtful that the ignorant user would realize that either the small circle on the bottom of the screen or a precise swipe from the bottom of the screen would cause a change on the front side of this odd metal and glass slab. The collective learned experience of the user base dictates the “intuitive approach” and from there varying approaches are judged based on how they stack up to the perceived ideal.
The totality of the track of You’re Not My God provides a similar template for observation. Contrasting the dark and intricate formulation of the main song with the hidden track and its almost comic cheer and bare bones simplicity makes one think.
We are wowed by complexity and those who have the ability to decipher complexity and make it palatable for common folk get elevated to higher rungs of society. The fable of the Gordian Knot is a classic (in this case literally classic) metaphor for this idea. Confronted with the impossible, a cunning Alexander thinks outside the box and provides an innovative solution. His reward is the sovereignty of the known world. Whether true or not, the fascination with complexity and solution making is clearly a long treasured aspect of the human experience.
It is also arguably false in many areas. Working with the accepted postulate that the purpose of musical art is an emotional conveyance of feelings and all that is within aims to contribute to that, complexity is a good only inasmuch as it contributes to the emotional totality of the work. Unnecessary complexity may in fact make the art and messaging inaccessible to the audience. If a Mediaeval Bard couldn’t get the audience to understand the tales being delivered musically he wasn’t considered an artist. He was viewed as being bad at his job.
Similar to how preconceived notions in technology skew judgements on the efficacy and “intuitiveness” of the software, years of music analysis based on the valuing of complexity do a similar thing to our perception of music. We get wowed by complex arrangements and focus on the chaff instead of focusing on the messages within. Of course, some just wish to listen to music for the “vibes’ but that is mere entertainment. In regards to the artistry of music, we have been focusing on the wrong things.
Without heaps of evidence, I feel this is in large part what has afflicted Urban in his latter decade of musical experimenting. The experimenting itself wasn’t the issue. After all his signature 2000s sound was a brash melding of pop, rock, and country in a manner never really done before. The issue as I see it is chasing after the wrong ideals. What made Urban’s music so effective and popular wasn’t the layered guitars or the subtle drum loops or even the signature joyous banjo. It was his charisma and relatable conviction. When he said that he would like nothing better then to write a song about a loved one and blast it in his car (Put You In A Song), you felt as if he genuinely did so. All the additional layers of instrumentation and production all aided and reinforced that conviction. Both the complex You’re Not My God and the overly simplistic One Chord Song effectively convey the disparate emotions of childish passion and retrospective regret.
All that seems to have been tossed to the wayside in the new era. The harshly disconnected melding of genre elevated to the focus of Urban’s attempted artistry led to a famine of substance. Perhaps a back to basics approach would achieve better results. Realization that message over medium is the ideal and a recalibration towards that would be a realistic path towards redemption for the music of Keith Urban. Every new release from him my hopes get further dashed, but I remain hopeful that the urbane Urban of old will once more reappear. Also it wouldn’t kill him to play more guitar on the new stuff. He’s pretty good at that and I miss it. But that’s just my biased spectatorial viewpoint.
Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments below!
Joe