Keith Urban Brings ‘Out The Cage’ to Life with Breland and Nile Rodgers
The high-energy song needed a matching music video!
Keith Urban has brought his electrifying album opener to life with the release of his “Out The Cage” music video. Featured on his most recent project The Speed of Now Part 1, the song enlisted the help of Nile Rodgers and Breland for the banjo-laced track.
“Out The Cage” marks the second time Urban and Rodgers have collaborated, the a first experience teaming up with rising star Breland. “Breland is an amazing young artist who I really wanted to see what we could come up with if we got into a room and wrote together. We wrote the opening track called ‘Out the Cage’ and another song called ‘Soul Food’ on the record. So, it was a blast getting to work with him,” shared Urban.
The high-energy clip, which Urban and Breland filmed in Sydney after a two-week quarantine, showcases the singer with his collaborators as they dance and play instruments about. The video showcases overlapping imagery of others breaking out of their own cages and embracing the “new day comin’.”
“Every time I Feel like I just can’t take it no more / I get angry That’s when I start runnin’ / In my mind’s eye Lies the key that’ll open the door / You can’t break me There’s a new day comin’,” Urban sings in the soaring track.
Urban first became interested in working with Breland after hearing his song “My Truck.” He finally reached out after reading an interview featuring the rising star and felt like the two would connect. They spoke on the phone and Urban invited him to a writing session next time Breland made the trip to Music City. Just a few days later, they entered a writing room together and penned the track.
“I know when we wrote ‘Out the Cage,’ that’s a great example of a song that, I know why I’m writing it, I know the perspective I’m coming at it from in my life experience and the things I’m passionate about,” Urban tells The Boot of the song written during the COVID-19 lockdown. “[But also,] I know why he’s writing it, and that’s a different life experience, a different passion, it’s a different thrust, and yet, it’s all connected: It’s all based in this feeling of confinement, whether it’s oppression or confinement through all kinds of ways, really.
“When we were writing the song, I said, ‘I really, really want this to be a song that speaks to liberation of all sorts,’ even if that’s somebody in a dead-end job, somebody that’s stuck relationship that’s going nowhere and they can’t get out, someone who’s sort of imprisoned in their own mind. You know, that line, ‘In my mind’s eye lies the key that’ll open the door / You can’t break me, there’s a new day coming,‘ is just trying to take back that power inside all of us, to keep pushing outwards and breaking out of any confinement.”
The track marks one of several times Urban has worked with another artist on a heart-pounding track. He’s also collaborated with P!nk on “One Too Many,” Carrie Underwood on “The Fighter,” and appears on two songs from Taylor Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version). Like Urban, Breland has been working with other artists, inviting Sam Hunt and Mickey Guyton to join him on “My Truck” and “Cross Country,” respectively.
Watch the video for “Out The Cage” now and listen to The Speed of Now Part 1 below.
