In 2001, Keith Urban was willing “to do anything” to get his career off the ground, including posing for Playgirl.
On a recent episode of SiriusXM’s “Literally! With Rob Lowe,” Urban explained that a guy at his record company pitched him the idea over two decades ago, and he decided to go with it.
“It was a guy at my record company who was like, ‘Hey, you know, we can do this article in Playgirl, and they’ll do a big, long, nice piece on the record.’ And I was like, ‘Great,’ and then we’ll go to a photo shoot too,” Urban told Lowe. “I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ Luckily, I play guitar and not harmonica.”
“That was fortuitous,” Lowe replied. “So, you at least knew by the time you got to the photo shoot what you were …”
“Yeah. Yep. Oh my God. Yeah. Apparently willing to do anything to get going,” Urban chimed in.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Urban and Lowe talked about the country music star’s famous marriage to Nicole Kidman. Urban admitted that although a lot of his songs are about his wife, not all of them are.
“I always think about someone who has a famous partner or 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 write a character where you know, I don’t know, 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?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. People think everything I write is about her, and, of course, you know, a lot of things are and a lot of things aren’t,” Urban responded. “I mean, you know, I’ve lived a life. I’ve had other experiences, and, also, it doesn’t always have to be a personal experience either.
“It could be observational. You know, I recorded this song called ‘Brown Eyed Baby,’ and I had X amount of people going, ‘Well, you can’t sing a song about a brown-eyed girl. I mean, she’s got blue eyes. She must’ve been so angry,’ and I’m like, ‘Not really.’
“No. It’s just a song. It’s just a song,” Urban emphasized. “People get so, I don’t know. So, it’s never, because I don’t think Dolly Parton actually worked 9 to 5.”
Kidman and Urban tied the knot in 2006. The couple share two daughters, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret.
The “Big Little Lies” actress was previously married to Tom Cruise, and the former couple adopted daughter Bella and son Connor during their marriage.