See Keith Urban, Julia Michaels’ Surreal ‘Coming Home’ Video

Keith Urban’s latest single “Coming Home” is all about taking the familiar and making it strange and new – even going so far as to repurpose one of country’s most famous guitar riffs. So it’s fitting that Urban’s surreal new video for “Coming Home” takes the world and turns it, literally, upside down.

Directed by Andy Hines (Logic, Alessia Cara), the “Coming Home” video depicts Urban wandering a dream state, where his altered reality is never quite what it seems – and, in most cases, portals to new levels of consciousness. Windows turn out to be holes in the ground, doors appear in the middle of a field, and bedrooms bleed into city streets. Urban even comes face to face with himself singing in a honky tonk, where he shares the stage with guest vocalist and co-writer Julia Michaels. Hines adds some subtle touches along the way, including starting the video in the same place it ends, spinning away from the neon sign inside the bar.

That theme of accessing memories and heightening awareness is embedded in the DNA of “Coming Home,” right down to the fact that Urban samples the intro to Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” “Hearing that rolling Haggard guitar lick sparked memories of my childhood, and my dream to come to America,” Urban said in a statement accompanying the song’s release in March. “I knew right then the story [of the song] was about the struggles of being in a city where your dreams have brought you, but far from your home – wherever, whomever and whatever that is for each of us.”

Though “Coming Home” has only just cracked the Top 20 of the country charts, Urban’s new LP Graffiti U shot straight to Number One earlier this month and currently sits at Number Two on the Billboard 200. Urban heads out on the Graffiti U World Tour beginning June 15th with a gig at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in St. Louis, Missouri.