Keith Urban: Back On Track
Country music star Keith Urban is hoping for great things in 2007.
The Aussie singer-songwriter and husband of Nicole Kidman has a new album, "Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing," which hit No. 1 when it debuted in November. He kicks off a much-anticipated world tour in April.
And Urban looks forward to a fresh start following a second stay in alcohol rehab.
On The Early Show Tuesday, he told co-anchor Hannah Storm the album "feels brand new," even though it's been out three months.
Urban called rehab "a real exercise in surrender. It really was — to let go of everything and recognize that, 'This is where I am, this is where I'm meant to be.' And just let everything go, give it up, you know."
The album proving successful while he was in rehab was, says Urban, "amazing. You know, I didn't go in expecting any of that sort of support. I went in with — it was a journey, and I'm still on it. And to get that support was phenomenal."."
He admits performing in front of live audiences again has him excited but "kind of antsy a little bit, actually."Photos: Keith Urban & Nicole Kidman
And Urban says going on the road could be therapeutic: "I think seeing people sing along with the new songs, especially, is great. And just feeling that thing that happens in the room when that moment comes with the music and the people have come — there's all that connectedness. When that happens, it gets to a single place and it's not individual. It's just all of us as one for that moment. It's extraordinary."
One song on the new ablum. "Stupid Boy," has a cute tale behind it.
Urban says it was written by Sarah Buxton and two men.
"She wrote it from the female perspective, obviously, as the observer, actually, of another couple, and putting it into the stupid boy sort of observational place," he explained.
The song has a woman telling a man's an idiot for the way he treated a woman.
"I heard the song and I just loved it," Urban recalled. "I mean, it's just one of those things. I loved it."
And he says he got help from Kidman in deciding how to deliver it and make it work.
"I played her the song," he told Storm, "and said, 'I really love this,' and I said, 'I wish I could find something like this.' And She said, 'Why don't you just do that song?' Stupid boy. I am!"