Keith Urban has revealed how his wild days of partying in bars amid his past battle with substance abuse have inspired his upcoming album High.
The 56-year-old singer has been sober for 18 years after a public battle with drug and alcohol abuse that last landed him in rehab four months after marrying Nicole Kidman in 2006.
Now, Keith has reflected on his time partying all night in bars with his friends and has told how he has recreated some of those moments in his new music.
She revealed that the music video for her newly released song Messed Up As Me was inspired by the many difficult situations she found herself in at the time.
“The music video takes place between 2:45 in the morning and sunrise. A lot of things happen in those hours and I was in every scene,” he said. The Telegraph newspaper.
“I’ve got a lot of things to explore, you know?” he says from Nashville. “This record is definitely not just about where I am; that would make it a very linear record.
‘I’ve definitely lived a life and been a lot of people, and a lot of those people are represented in these songs.’
The song’s music video shows Keith looking gloomy and distressed as he sits in a warehouse-like room singing lyrics about going out drinking and taking “shots.”
Keith Urban has revealed how his wild days of partying in bars amid his battle with substance abuse have inspired his upcoming album High
The poignant words reflect his own battle with alcoholism, beginning with the opening lines: “When I get blue, I get dark blue / When I get one, I always get a few.”
The Grammy Award-winning artist also sings about “the tequila starting to take its toll” and feeling “broke” and “all alone” in the emotional song.
Keith’s upcoming album High, due for release on September 20, also sees Keith collaborate with Lainey Wilson on a song called Go Home WU, which also details a wild Saturday night.
Keith sings honestly about being overdrawn but still going out to “get broke” and “live large in a small-town bar.”
The chorus adds: ‘Oh, I know it’s time to close and / I won’t lie, yeah, I drank more than a few (few) / And you know I shouldn’t drive / I think I should probably go home with you.’
Keith had previously had a very public battle with drug and alcohol abuse, which led his actress wife Nicole, 57, to stage an intervention to help him quit drugs.
He entered rehab on several occasions, most recently at the Betty Ford Center in October 2006, just four months after marrying Nicole.
Keith (pictured in 2002) has revealed that the music video for his newly released song Messed Up As Me was inspired by his wild nights out and the tough situations he found himself in.
“I was very, very fortunate that Nic filed for an intervention against me,” Keith previously said, adding that his reckless behavior “caused my new marriage to implode.”
Speaking about Nicole’s decision to stay with him during his third rehab stint in eight years, Keith once said that “she really should have left.”
Earlier this year, Keith admitted that Nicole showed him “what love really looks like in action” when his drug abuse issues surfaced after they married in 2006.
“Four months into our marriage, I’m in rehab for three months,” Keith shared in an emotional speech in April when Nicole received the AFI Life Achievement Award.
‘Nic overcame all the negative voices, I’m sure even some of his own, and chose love. And here we are, 18 years later.’
Her emotional speech brought tears to Nicole, who was sitting with her two daughters, Sunday Rose, 15, and Faith Margaret, 13.
Keith, who grew up watching his late father Robert drink to excess, previously said it took him “a long time to get sober” because he didn’t “recognise” his alcoholism.
“I didn’t drink like my dad, so I compared everything to him,” he recalled in a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone.
“But I was finally able to make the right decision in my life, which I wish my father (who passed away in 2015) would have made.”
The 56-year-old singer has been sober for 18 years after a public battle with drug and alcohol abuse that last landed him in rehab four months after marrying Nicole Kidman in 2006.
Keith has been open about his past struggles with alcohol addiction and revealed in 2018 that he wished he had gotten sober earlier in his life.
“I wish I had been sober many years earlier, but it is what it is,” he said.
“I knew I wasn’t fulfilling my potential and that was what was starting to affect me. I was enslaved… I was living a very, very small life.”
Keith also admitted that he was terrible at relationships before meeting Nicole and that the lyrics in his songs about love were far from his reality.
“I was writing songs about love and relationships – I remember writing Somebody Like You and playing it to my girlfriend at the time and she looked at me and said, ‘You’re a fucking hypocrite,’ and I couldn’t argue with that,” he added.