Keith Urban Explains Why He Sings About Drinking While Sober

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Keith Urban has been sober since 2006, but he still loves a good drinking song. Urban’s next album HIGH, out on September 20, has several songs that reference drinking, including “Laughin’ All the Way To The Drank” and his current Top 20 single, “Messed Up As Me.”

While Urban is no longer imbibing, the 56-year-old is still happy to sing about drinking and party songs, even if they no longer relate to him personally.

“Separate to my recovery journey, I’m exactly the guy I’ve always been in my spirit and my edge and devilishness, whatever you want to call it,” Urban explains to Billboard. “All that stuff that happened coming up playing in the clubs in Australia, and then paying my dues here — all of that is still a big part of who I am. And so now I sing those songs from having been in those places.”

For Urban, his sobriety has little, if any, effect on the kind of music he wants to sing, or who he knows he is singing his songs to in concert.

“’Messed Up as Me,’ I know exactly who that guy is,” Urban shares. “’Laughing All the Way to the Drank,’ I know exactly who that guy is. But in a lot of these cases, I’m also singing to people in the audience. I see that guy in the audience every night. He doesn’t seem to have a lot, but he seems to be the guy having the best time, and he’s a hard-working dude Monday to Friday. He’s my dad.

“My dad was up at 6:00 AM, and he’d be drinking all the night before,” he adds. “So those songs are all places, people I know. They’re real songs in that regard, every one of them.”

Photo byCourtesy of the CMA

Urban grew up with an alcoholic father, which became a hindrance for him when he was ready to eliminate drugs and alcohol from his own life.

“It took me a long time to get sober,” Urban previously said of overcoming his addictions (via the Today Show). “Took me a long time to recognize my alcoholism. A long time because I didn’t drink like my dad, so I compared everything to him. So it just took a long time for me. But I was able to finally make the right choice in my life, that I wish my dad would have made.”

Not surprisingly, it was Urban’s marriage to Nicole Kidman that gave him the courage he needed to get sober.

“I remember just feeling so terrified,” Urban later said. “We had just gotten married and this entity in my life is coming just to crush and kill everything that I’ve got. Everything that’s good. And I was making [a] record during that whole period, trying desperately to keep that entity out of my life. And I was struggling with my voice, I was just struggling with everything.”

See a track list for HIGH below. Pre-order/pre-save the project here. Urban will kick off his HIGH in Vegas residency in October. Find all of Urban’s music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.

HIGH Track List:

1. BLUE SKY
2. STRAIGHT LINE
3. MESSED UP AS ME
4. WILDSIDE
5. GO HOME W U (WITH LAINEY WILSON)
6. CHUCK TAYLORS
7. DAYTONA
8. LOVE IS HARD
9. HEART LIKE A HOMETOWN
10. LAUGHIN’ ALL THE WAY TO THE DRANK
11. DODGE IN A SILVERADO
12. BREAK THE CHAIN