Keith Urban has a long list of things he loves about being a parent to daughters Sunday and Margaret, but perhaps his favorite part is the title.
“The first thing is probably just having someone call you dad,” Urban says. “I’m like, ‘Omigosh! I’m her dad! That’s amazing.’ That’s probably the first thing to me. The different personalities that our two daughters have, that’s amazing.”
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Urban wed actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, welcoming their first daughter two years later. Although the Aussie thought he knew what it would be like to have children, in hindsight he realizes he had no idea.
“I think for the people that haven’t had kids – which I hadn’t for a long, long time. I didn’t have kids ’til later on, and being around it is not the same as having them,” Urban says. “I realize that it’s not something that can be explained until you actually sort of have it, so I’m glad I got to experience that.”
Urban’s family will undoubtedly join him for at least part of his Graffiti U World Tour, which kicks off on Friday, June 15 in St. Louis, Mo., and includes Kelsea Ballerini as his opening act.
“We talked about touring [together before] and not enough of the dates lined up for us to do it, and they just did this time,” Urban says of Ballerini. “One of those stars lining up moments. I just felt musically it’s such a great compatibility of fusion that we both sort of work in. It’s certainly not pure country, neither of us. We obviously grew up with contemporary country influences, pop country influences, and I just felt that it was a great, great collaborative blend of the two of us. I always think about my audiences too and who are they going to respond to, and I think they’ll love Kelsea.”
Urban is eager to play the songs from Graffiti U in front of the fans who inspired the entire project.
“I didn’t like the word on its own,” Urban says of using the word ‘graffiti.’ “It felt like it needed one more thing, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s for the audience. It’s for the listener. That’s what I do this for.’ It’s what every artist does it for. I said the other day, ‘If an album played in the forest, would anyone ever hear it?’ [laughs] So, the audience is key. The listener is the other half of it. And I thought ‘You! It’s You are the audience.’ So, ‘Graffiti You’ felt really good, and when I wrote it down, I thought, ‘Well, it shouldn’t be Y-O-U. It should be just the letter ‘U’ to really personalize it.’”
Find all of Urban’s Graffiti U World Tour dates at KeithUrban.net.
Photo Credit: Instragram/keithurban
