Polaroid

When US scientist Edwin H. Land invented the first inexpensive filters capable of polarizing light, he called it Polaroid film. The first major applications for the film were for sunglasses and scientific work. The Polaroid camera came about through a holiday trip in 1943 to New Mexico when Land's 3-year-old daughter, Jennifer, asked why she could not immediately see the photographs he had taken of her. The first instant Polaroid Land Cameras went on sale in a Boston department store for $89.75 ($900 in today's money) on November 26, 1948. All 57 had sold by the end of the day. During this breezy, evocative number, Keith Urban recalls the fond memories of a couple's first meeting. The night it was taken, I didn't have a clue That someday I'd be something more than just a boy in a Polaroid with you That first meeting was immortalized in a Polaroid photograph.

Written by Steph Jones (Pink, Selena Gomez), Geoff Warburton (5 Seconds of Summer, Shawn Mendes), Sam Fischer (Demi Lovato, Jessie J), Griffen Palmer and Mark Trussell, the guitar-driven number is a nostalgic throwback to a time before smartphone cameras. Urban didn't write the song, but when his friends sent it to him, he immediately connected with its concept. "When I first moved to Nashville, my band and I lived in this just, rundown, piece-of-crap house, and we had parties all the time, and somebody gave us a Polaroid camera, and we'd take pictures of everybody and put them up on a wall," the singer told Zane Lowe. "And the idea that this couple in this photograph who were at a party that they didn't really want to be at, but they sort of ran into each other and someone said, 'Hey, smile.' And they snapped them. And then all these years later, they're still together. And who would have thought that someday I'd be more than just a boy in a Polaroid with you, which I thought was just such a great lyric."

Joey Moi produced the track. The Canadian record producer has work with both country acts (Florida Georgia Line, Morgan Wallen, Jake Owen) and rock groups (Hinder, Nickelback) on his resumé. His credits for Nickelback include the similarly themed hit song "Photograph."