Throughout the glorious late-career renaissance of Nile Rodgers – with Chic becoming a surefire festival hit, and Get Lucky conquering the world – it has seemed there has only been one thing missing: an EDM collaboration with an Australian country singer. If that’s what you’ve been wishing for, your wishes are to come true.
The disco legend is now working with Keith Urban on tracks described by the Ram Country website as “EDM-country”.
“I really pushed him to sing at the top of his range,” Rodgers said. “Keith was nervous about it; he wanted to do another take. But I told him I loved the way it sounds.
“His fans may have some kind of problem at first,” Rodgers said. “But my biggest records have always been like that. A lot of people, the only record they ever bought by David Bowie was Let’s Dance. That’s at least [seven] million albums — he’d never sold anything near that before. So his fanbase got angry: ‘This sucks! This is not Ziggy Stardust! That’s not Scary Monsters!’ But it was huge because it spoke to a broader audience. I think a record like this will speak to a broader audience [for Urban], and the country people will come around.”
Rodgers said he first met Urban at a pre-Grammys event in February, where he expressed his admiration for Urban’s guitar playing. “And I really like what Keith does on the banjo,” Rodgers said. “I’m a jazz guy, I don’t put a capo on my guitar — to me that’s, like, taboo. But when I watched Keith do it, I was like, ‘Wait a minute! I gotta learn this!’ So I watched him play, and I went home and started practicing. I said to him, ‘Give me six months and I’m going to be killin’! I’m moving to Nashville!’ Of course I’m joking — I mean, I’m not going to move to Nashville. But give me six months and I’ll have that down.”
Nile Rodgers, Keith Urban, a banjo and EDM? What could possibly go wrong?
As if that’s not enough Rodgers-related strangeness, he also told the Sun this week he was working in the studio with Cara Delevingne. “I would say she’s a rock chick and a really cool one too,” he said. “It’s not helping, it’s collaborating. When she played me her tracks I was shocked, it’s cool.”
