EDM Country: Keith Urban Taking Crossovers To A New Level

Add Keith Urban to the pile of talent hitching themselves to the EDM bandwagon.

According to a recent Yahoo! Music piece, which made claim that country music superstar Urban and famed guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers were hard at work trying to manifest a new sound Rodgers described as “EDM Country.” Rodgers made the announcement after playing two rough tracks from the new Urban collaboration for his audience at the Freak Out/Let’s Dance festival in Long Island, NY.

Sounds it wont be long until we see Urban in diffraction glasses and other rave gear. 

The emergence of EDM in popular music is inciting so many unlikely collaborations sprouting from the music industry’s soil, opening up new avenues for the genre to stem into new territory entirely. With young acts like Lady Antebellum, Justin Bieber, and Selena Gomez serving as the most recent wave of collaborators (hell, even Taylor Swift shares googly-eyes with Calvin Harris), it was only a matter of time before seasoned vets interested in spicing things up made a move like this. 

Even though we have to wait to hear the tracks and make the judgement ourselves, it’s a little troublesome that the duo feel keen on using the now buzzworthy EDM description. Especially when the instrumentation the two are using are dueling banjos and guitars. One would think that if it was the EDM sound they were after, there wouldn’t be a shortage of young and hungry producers who would jump at the opportunity to share the studio with the multi-Grammy Award winning Urban.

Instead, the EDM spokesperson on this project is Rodgers himself, who rose to prominence as part of the disco collective Chic.  

Do you think that there’s too much EDM going around? Is stuff like this good or bad for the genre? Sound off on social media and let us know by commenting on our Facebook or Tweeting us @iEDMLife or to me directly at @endeegie.  

In the mean time, check out some of Rodgers natural skills and see if you can spot out some potential for a good crossover. Can you picture him in a light up mask?