Photo: Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal
Keith Urban shared the emotional story behind one of the tracks that appears on his newest studio album, HIGH, during a recent interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
Urban appeared in an episode of the daytime talk show that aired last week; however, host and award-winning artist Kelly Clarkson explained “we had so much to talk about,” the full conversation didn’t fit into one episode. The “Kelly extra” featured a heartfelt discussion of the deeply vulnerable meaning behind Urban’s song, “Break The Chain.”
Clarkson noted that the song is about Urban’s father when she spotlighted the lyric: “Out here/ I’ve been out here/ On my own now/ For way too long/ Fightin' my own battles/ With my demons/ With the way that I was raised.”
Clarkson asked Urban what the experience was like for him to write a song like “Break The Chain” at this stage in his life — as an adult and as a parent — as opposed to approaching it when he was younger. In her own career, Clarkson wrote “Because of You” and “Piece by Piece,” which she felt “were very different,” at different stages in her life. She was pregnant with her first child when she wrote “Piece by Piece,” which released in 2015, and “it hit me differently. …It really gave me a different perspective. I was like…’how could you walk away?’”
Urban said “Break The Chain,” a song about his father, “was just a gift that day in the strangest way.” It was unplanned, Urban said, without a title, lyric or melody to begin with when he met with co-writer Mark Scibilia on a day off from touring. It was the first time Urban and Scibilia met, and the pair began writing “Break The Chain” immediately.
“I just burst out crying,” Urban said of the moment he wrote the line about his father. “(I was) just sitting on this couch, just weeping in this complete stranger’s house. ...He looks over at me on the couch and sees me like this, and he goes, ‘hmm, must be true.’ And then went back to work. and it was the perfect reaction because it just let me stay in it. (We) finished out the song, got on the mic, sang it, and then that’s the vocal. I didn’t redo it. It wasn’t one of those things like ‘let’s take it in the studio and get it all pro.’ It’s like, let it be true. Just let it be what it is.
“I had no idea I was still processing that stuff with my father,” he continued later. “My dad was alcoholic and so, you know, that has its dysfunctional raising that I thought I’d long worked through. And he’s been passed away for seven or so years, and I’m at peace with him. I have no issue. Everything’s good. I’ve worked through it all, and then you write this song and you’re like, ‘nope.’ I’m still working through stuff, apparently.”
Urban and Clarkson shared a candid discussion of processing difficult moments and gaining understanding, particularly after having children. “Break The Chain” is the last of 12 tracks to appear on Urban’s newest album, which arrived on September 20. He said HIGH aims to offer “contrasts” of “highs, lows,” and more in life. Watch the full interview clip here, and listen to “Break The Chain” below.