LOS ANGELES, Feb 17 — For Keith Urban: the longer, the better. The country megastar has released a new single, I Am Home, on the Calm meditation and relaxation app. An hour-long track that was specifically composed to help listeners nod off in these difficult times.
Although most musicians would hate to hear that their latest single puts listeners to sleep, Keith Urban takes it as a compliment. The Australian singer-songwriter has recently collaborated with Calm for an “ethereal odyssey designed to rock listeners to a restful sleep.” A subject Urban is surprisingly passionate about.
“Sleep is so important as a singer. It was definitely a time when I wasn’t getting enough of it but I was definitely paying the price for that, losing my voice a lot, so I learnt pretty quick. Fitting sleep into my life is important to me: mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally. Everything health, everything about it, [it’s] super important,” he explains in a video about I Am Home.
You’ve never heard a @keithurban song quite like this one. Available only on Calm, I Am Home is a dreamy, ethereal sleep song designed to help you unwind and drift off. Listen now: https://t.co/zgHtkVLTth pic.twitter.com/nJMUJMyKfX
— Calm (@calm) February 10, 2021
While Urban admits that he has “never written a song about sleep before,” he is the third award-winning musician to try his hand at it for Calm. The meditation app, which has been booming since the beginning of the pandemic, has previously collaborated with Moses Sumney, Diplo, Juliana Barwick and Lindsey Stirling to create original music for its users.
American singer-songwriter Moby also released the sequel to 2016’s Long Ambients 1: Calm. Sleep, as an exclusive through Calm in March 2019.
“I originally made these songs for myself because I couldn’t find this type of music anywhere. Long Ambients 2 was designed to help me sleep and to help other people find calm and maybe get a good night’s sleep. I hope to share it with other people who have sleep issues or battle anxiety or have a hard time calming themselves down,” he said at the time of the release, which fittingly coincided with World Sleep Day.
Although these collaborations may surprise music aficionados, they are an integral part of Calm’s marketing strategy. And they seem to attract new users, as app analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates that it was downloaded 3.9 million times by April 2020. — ETX Studio
