'I've always felt like an artist': Keith Urban on blending genres on his new album Graffiti U

If you listen to any new music these days, you may have noticed that it's getting more difficult to categorize what genre you're listening to. Pop and hip-hop are crossing over, rap and rock are sometimes blended together, but one of the most popular and enduring crossovers is the mix of country and pop.

Keith Urban is one of country music's biggest stars, and now, as most ambitious artists tend to do, he's created something unlike anything he's done before. Urban has teamed up with some of the biggest songwriters in pop music today, including Ed Sheeran and Julia Michaels, to fuse together pop and country on his latest record, Graffiti U.

Tom Power sat down with Urban at his hotel in Toronto to talk about the new album and why he chose to connect Merle Haggard with modern pop music on the first track, Coming Home. 

You can catch Urban performing at the Canadian Country Music Association Awards this September, live on CBC TV and online at cbcmusic.ca. His new album is out now.

— Produced by Mitch Pollock

Keith Urban, Coming Home

Keith Urban, Parallel Lines