Forgetting the lyrics to a song mid-performance is a nightmare for most performers, but when Keith Urban works through his memory flubs, it’s more of a nightmare for the sound person than the Australian country star. With 13 studio albums and countless more covers under his belt, Urban has memorized more songs than the Average Joe. Still, not even a global star like Urban is immune to a brain fart.
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The singer shared his hilarious workaround to these memory flubs, and while it’s a great technique for the singer, we can’t help but laugh at the stress Keith Urban’s road crew must be under when it happens.
Keith Urban’s Hilarious Workaround For Forgetting Lyrics
During a December 2024 appearance on the Jennifer Hudson Show, Keith Urban revealed that although he has memorized thousands of lyrics, he’ll still have the occasional memory flub while performing live. Hudson, a fellow performer, asked Urban if he had any tricks for working through these mind blanks in real time.
Urban explained that if he’s singing into the mic and forgets the lyrics, instead of improvising or dropping out completely, he’ll cut out his own voice. (Imagine trying to pretend like your reception is breaking up on a phone call.) He’ll stutter his speech, wiggle the XLR cable, and quizzically look at the mic until he remembers the next lines.
As a country music superstar, Keith Urban’s live shows are no small production. Countless crew members have to work together to ensure the performances go off without a hitch, making Urban’s workaround even funnier. We couldn’t help but imagine the stress the sound person must be under when they think Urban’s mic is cutting out, and later in the interview, Urban proved us right.
“Apparently, I do it so well that in the middle of the song, my roadie ran out and replaced the microphone completely,” Urban laughed.
Other Times, The Mistakes Aren’t So Intentional
A good road crew can fix a problem at a second’s notice, whether the problem is real or made up, as Keith Urban wiggles his mic cable through a memory flub. But there have been plenty of times when the country star’s roadies save him from other stage disasters that weren’t so intentional. He recalled one such moment during an interview with Dan Rather.
Several years before he sat down with Rather for The Big Interview series, Urban decided he’d like to try and perform a song on the piano in total darkness. He wanted to create an “immersive experience” for the audience by having everyone listen to the music in the pitch black. “I thought, I’ll put candles on top of the piano, and I’ll explain to the crowd what I’m doing,” Urban said. “I’ll make it quite dramatic. Here’s the problem. I hadn’t rehearsed it, which I should have.”
Urban said he blew the candles out one by one, building tension for the audience as it got progressively darker. Once every candle was out, he went to play the piano…and couldn’t. A roadie had to rush out on stage with a flashlight so Urban could see the keys. After that, the lighting guy kept the stage lit for the rest of the song. Urban met up with him after the show and commented on how he could have turned the lights back off once he got going, to which the tech replied, “It looked terrible. It doesn’t work, Keith.”
While not all of Urban’s ideas (or memory flubs) might be the easiest to work around, it sounds like the country star has a great crew ready to keep the show going.
Photo by: Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
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