Country singer Keith Urban and actress Nicole Kidman got married in June 2006, after meeting for the first time in 2005. Urban didn’t call Kidman until four months after they met, and she initially thought he wasn’t interested. But their attraction was immediate, and they were married a little more than a year later.
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Urban has penned many love songs since then, openly admitting that a lot of them were inspired by his wife. He freely speaks about Kidman’s influence when he wanted to get sober, and credits her with that milestone. In celebration of their almost 20 years together, here are the songs Keith Urban has revealed to be directly inspired by Nicole Kidman.
“Got It Right This Time (The Celebration)”
“Got It Right This Time (The Celebration)” was initially released on the album Love, Pain & The Whole Crazy Thing from 2006. Urban and Kidman married in June that year, and the album came out in November. Timeline-wise, it seems that Urban wrote this song early in their relationship. Clearly he had an idea that he wanted to spend his life with Kidman.
“It’s interesting, because the song’s hook is, ‘I think I got it right this time.’ And I’m certainly at a point now where there’s no thinking involved! There’s a little more conviction than that,” Urban said to AOL around 2007. “And I had that full conviction when I wrote it, but as a songwriter, there are choices made with words because they sing well. But as the song has evolved and grown, our marriage has evolved a lot.”
When he recorded the song again for his Greatest Hits album in 2007, Urban included an ad-libbed line at the end, singing “I mean, I know I do.” For him, this indicated the changes he’d gone through and that conviction he spoke about.
“Once In A Lifetime”
Also released on Love, Pain & The Whole Crazy Thing, “Once In A Lifetime” clearly depicts the act of falling in love with someone special. Again, it seems like Keith Urban somewhat knew where his relationship would take him, judging by these romantic songs.
During a concert in 2014, Urban revealed some background about the song, which he wrote after speaking with Kidman about their upcoming wedding. “Nic was getting very nervous about marrying me,” he told the crowd. “She was saying things like, ‘It’s a long shot,’ [but] I knew she loved me and was just nervous. I did everything I could to remind her that I was going to be her man forever.”
“The Fighter”
“The Fighter” was released on the 2017 album Ripcord and featured Carrie Underwood. Keith Urban has stated that he was thinking of Nicole Kidman while he wrote it. Additionally, he revealed that some of the lines were things they’d directly said to each other.
“It was just a very quick, quick song to write, because I literally thought about Nic and I and our relationship in the beginning, and some of the things we had said all went into that song,” he said in 2017.
After the single was released, Urban dropped a music video on YouTube. It featured Urban and Kidman in their car, recorded with possibly a phone camera, singing along to the song as it played. Urban serenaded his wife while Kidman lip synced to Underwood’s verses. It was a simple video, but it was intimate and romantic.
“Gemini”
In 2018 Keith Urban released Graffiti U, which featured the song “Gemini.” He revealed that, when writing the song with three other co-writers, they asked him about Kidman. “‘Tell us about Nic?’” they asked, and he replied, “‘Well, she’s a Gemini.’” The song bloomed from there.
“Gemini” describes Kidman as a complete woman, sensual but smart. When it came out many thought it was a little daring for Urban to sing about his wife like that. But Kidman revealed that she had no intention of editing his work.
“I don’t censor his art if I can be a muse for it,” she said on an Australian radio show. While she admitted the revealing line about their hypothetical sex life was a little embarrassing, she also implied that it meant their marriage was strong. “Still,” she said, “It’s better than saying ‘God, I’m so bored. Make an effort, Nicole!’”
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