Keith Urban has sold more than 15 million records, had 20 No 1s in America and won four Grammy awards. His recent single, One Too Many, has been streamed 400 million times. It’s a huge amount of success. Yet how do most of us know him? He’s the man married to Nicole Kidman.
Poor bloke. Well, not that poor — he is worth a reported $75 million. He speaks to me via Zoom from the couple’s home in Nashville. As opposed to the ones in Australia, Los Angeles and New York, which they travel between with their children Faith, 10, and Sunday, 13. So he’s doing fine, but it must be strange. In the US and Australia he is a festival-headlining superstar. In the UK this month he is playing venues holding 3,000 people. He says he is still finding his audience here 32 years into his career largely because we never quite got country music, for which Urban is known. Yet it is slowly getting to be more Mr Urban than Mr Kidman over here; his latest album is his highest-charting yet in the UK.
“It was the same when I moved to America from Australia,” he says with a shrug while talking about proving himself again. Down under he was a big star. “Then I moved to America and I was nobody. It was rough.”
Urban has gone from bad boy to supportive husband, seen in black tie on the red carpet at the Oscars last month, supporting his best actress-nominated wife. So just who is he? The 54-year-old was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia with his family as a teenager, where a career in the country scene followed. In 1992 the home of country, Nashville, called and seven lean years later he made it big, via his debut album. Over his career he branched out to morph country into rock and pop. And simply got bigger.
Yet, as with so many musicians, struggling or successful, there came temptation. For years Urban fought addiction to alcohol and cocaine.
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He checked into rehab in 1998 and, months after marrying Kidman, into the celebrity-friendly Betty Ford clinic. This all found its way into his songs, with the ballad Thank You in particular addressing his gratitude to Kidman.
Does he play the songs he writes for her before playing them to anyone else? “Well, my studio is at the house, so the whole family hears this stuff,” he says. “I know about the projects that Nic’s working on because there are scripts lying around.” Does he seek approval from her? “No. But I’ve learnt the way I feel playing a song for someone is more important than their reaction. Sometimes I’ve really loved a song until I’ve played it to the person. Then I suddenly did not feel good about it.”
Thank You goes “I thank you for my life” — what made Urban realise that a change was necessary? “My dad was an alcoholic, so I grew up in an alcoholic house and it took me a long time to believe I was wired the same,” he says softly. “I don’t talk a lot about it because I love my audience being able to just come and have a great time. I’ve nothing against drugs or alcohol. Everyone does what they want to do to have a great time. I just realised I’m allergic to it. Someone said, ‘You have an allergy? What happens when you drink?’ And I said, ‘I break out in cuffs.’
“But I had to find a different way to be in the world,” he continues. “I’m glad it didn’t change anything about my music. I wrote plenty of hit songs while drunk. I wrote plenty sober. I feel lucky it hasn’t defined my creativity.” Because that is the main worry for musicians about giving up bad habits? “Definitely.”
Now Urban has a contacts book that allows him to dream up a guitar part that sounds like Nile Rodgers but, rather than getting some session musician to play it, just call up Rodgers instead.
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Then there was the time in 2009 when Taylor Swift toured with him. “It was so obvious she was not like anybody else,” Urban says, grinning. “We stayed supportive of each other.” Indeed, last year she asked Urban to sing on her single That’s When. He was in a food hall in Australia when she texted him a demo of the track.
He also talks, sweetly, about the time he “kind of met” Michael Hutchence, the INXS singer. It was in Sydney in 1991. It was midnight and Urban was called to provide vocals on the INXS song Shining Star. “Michael came and was obviously . . . Well, it’s late at night. He was with us, but not really with us.” The men stood next to each other, doing vocals. “And still nobody introduced me.” Then they started to sing, but it was not good. The vocals were redone. “Then Michael looks at me, blurry-eyed. He says, ‘Who the f*** is blondie?’” Urban laughs. “I never met him again.”
And, of course, there is Kidman. As Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos the actress is digitally de-aged from 54 to her early thirties. Which must have been weird for her husband. “At this point,” he says, “nothing’s odd. I’ve seen it all. She can’t look any way that seems odd to me any more. Still, it’s amazing how many times people forget it’s a film. People saw her [bedraggled] in Destroyer and said, ‘She has really let herself go. She looks terrible.’ It’s a movie role!”
He has found the past two years of the pandemic “a shock” because he has missed playing live music. “I got very negative,” he says. Playing music to crowds is what he has done for most of his life. He missed it.
“I was frustrated, professionally speaking. I was on the couch in my sweatpants waiting for the whole thing to blow over. So we can get back to work again.”
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Keith Urban is on tour in the UK this month and next
