Keith Urban has denied claims that every song he writes is about his wife Nicole Kidman, explaining that some of his tracks are simply observational.
The country singer and the Hollywood star met in January 2005 and began dating six months later. They married on June 25, 2006, and share two daughters: Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret.
During an appearance on Rob Lowe’s podcast released on September 26, titled “Keith Urban Live From Hollywood,” the two men discussed the music industry and if Urban is repeatedly asked whether all of his songs are about his famous wife. Lowe began hosting his podcast Literally! With Rob Lowe in June 2020.
Newsweek emailed a spokesperson for Urban for comment on Friday.
“I always think about someone who has a famous partner, who writes about relationships. Do you ever, is it ever a thing where you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s about Nicole.’ Do you know what I mean? Do you ever have that?” Lowe asked.
“I mean, has that ever become an issue where people are like, ‘If you write something, you’re writing a character where things are not going well.’ Then you’re like, ‘People are gonna think it’s about me and Nicole.’ Do you ever, does that ever enter into your consciousness?”
Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman attend the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute Celebrating Nicole Kidman at Dolby Theatre on April 27, 2024, in Hollywood, California. The country singer has explained that not every song he writes is about his wife.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Urban explained that he is aware that most people assume every song he writes is about his famous wife, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
“People think that everything I write is about [Kidman] and of course, you know, a lot of things are and a lot of things aren’t,” Urban said.
“I’ve lived a life, I’ve had other experiences and I—also, it doesn’t have to always be personal experiences either, it can be observational.
“I recorded a song called ‘Brown Eyes Baby’ and I had X amount of people going, ‘Well that, you can’t sing, you can’t sing a song about a brown-eyed girl, I mean, she’s got blue eyes. She must have been so angry.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, no not really, it’s just a song. It’s just a song.'”
“People get so, I don’t know. So, it’s never, because I don’t think Dolly Parton actually worked 9 to 5,” Urban added as the studio laughed. “It’s just a song.”
Lowe quipped: “That’s the mic drop, there is nothing more to say with this line of questioning.”
Talking about songwriting, Urban compared it to therapy, explaining that sometimes when writing, “something comes up” that he has no idea he is working through internally. This is particularly in reference to his song “Break the Chain,” which is about evaluating how you were raised and his relationship with his late father, who was an alcoholic.
“You talk about people interpreting songs as always being about, say my wife, or whatever—I think it’s always harder, I find it hard as a songwriter to be completely transparent and truthful without hurting people. It’s very hard to strike that balance,” he said.
“‘Break the Chain’ was definitely, of all of the songs I’ve written, that was the hardest in being OK with it going on the record and being a thing. Because I thought, ‘Oh man, my mom’s going to hear this song, my brother’s going to hear this song.’
“I’m not putting down my family at all, what I’m trying to do is say that every one of us has come from some family in some form…we didn’t choose them…And developing survival techniques and patterns and behaviors, they just naturally happen so that we exist and hopefully thrive in this family.
“And then we go out into the world and all that stuff, half of it’s completely dysfunctional but it worked there perfectly.”
Urban explained that over time, he learned that he no longer needed the patterns of behavior he had learned during his childhood.
He added: “Can I break that pattern, can I change this behavior and do things different? That’s really what this song was also about.”
