As posted about yesterday, Nicole’s husband Keith Urban released his new album in the US earlier this week. With that, of course, came lots of interviews, and needless to say there were a few mention of Nic. Here are a few of them, and feel free to let me know of any other ones you may have come across:
On the release day of ‘Get Closer,’ Keith explained that his albums have always been used as snapshots of where he is in his life.
“The songs aren’t just about where I am today. The feelings on the records have been very accurate,” Keith told us. “The feeling on this record is where I am today. This record is made in 2010. This is where I am.”
And where he is, as echoed in several tracks of ‘Get Closer,’ is a place of much joy and comfort. With a blissfully happy home life with his wife, actress Nicole Kidman, and their daughter, Sunday Rose, Keith explained that he’s now in a place where he embraces intimacy instead of running away from love –something he’s done a lot in the past.
“My own personal experience has been one of a realization of what loving means. Anybody who has loved someone and had their heart broken, they know how hard it is to love again, if they can even do it at all,” Keith said. “It’s very difficult; it can take a long time if it ever happens.”
“I look back at my life and up to meeting Nic, I think I was just scared. Scared of someone hurting me,” he admitted. “I was stuck in a rut subconsciously but consciously not aware of it at all. It really took meeting her for me to start coming to a realization of the courage it takes to love. Do I really have that? This record addresses a bit of that.”
As far as his advice on having a healthy relationship, Keith says to be patient.
“We’ve all got our own journey, that’s the first thing. It’s not about a time limit.”
While Urban explored new relationships with his guitars on Get Closer, he found himself singing about more mature ones. He and Kidman have been married four years (daughter Sunday Rose turned 2 while Urban was making the album), and though he doesn’t acknowledge that he wrote a song about Kidman, tracks like current single Put You in a Song and Right on Back to You indicate that he’s growing comfortable in his role as husband and father.
“I didn’t intend for the record to have a theme,” he says, “but it turned out that a lot of these songs were relationship-based — basically, all of them.”
In Right on Back, the album’s emotional centerpiece, a man figures out that his natural urge to drive away from a relationship’s problems is taking him in exactly the wrong direction. Urban sings the song from a first-person perspective, and when he discusses it, he unconsciously shifts from third person to first, as if he’s talking about himself as much as the song.
“The turning point in that song is in the guy recognizing that it’s exactly when I want to run that I should turn around and hold you closer, actually physically pull you closer to me,” he says. “Which is exactly what I don’t want to do. Whether it’s an argument or whatever it is, the answer is going to be getting closer.”
When choosing a title for the new album, “I was trying to find something that summed that up,” he says. “I thought, ‘Well, Get Closer says that pretty clearly.’ ”
Put You in a Song sounds like it might fulfill an early promise to his wife. But the one song on Get Closer that most sounds like it was written for her came from outside sources: Dave Pahanish and Joe West’s Without You, which references fast cars and guitars (both of which he collects) and a baby girl. They’re all key elements in Urban’s world.
“I played it for her one night and couldn’t believe how much it encapsulated my whole life,” Urban says. “It was really the most autobiographical song I’ve never written.
“For whatever reason, I stumbled upon a song that touched upon my life in a much clearer way than even I could write about. Maybe, as a writer, I would think that’s too simple, it’s too literal to say ‘the fast cars, the guitars.’ A song like that’s just crystal clear. And I love it.”
All that’s just a bit of fun, though. For the most part, Get Closer finds Urban sounding like a man settling in for the long haul.
“I’m inspired by love and romance,” he says, “so I’m fortunate to have that in my life.”
You mean where he is this month?