Keith Urban: His Amazing Journey from Daydreamer to Superstar

Four Grammys. 20 US Number Ones. A Hollywood marriage. Who wouldn’t want to be Keith Urban?

Keith Urban came from humble origins. His father worked at the local tip and Keith was a high school dropout. But Keith had a plan: conquering Nashville. ‘It’s my destiny’, he said. And Keith was hell-bent on scaling that musical Everest. Whatever it took.

It didn’t come easy. Keith served his apprenticeship in the beer barns of Australia and his early trips to America were disastrous. But he never gave up, settling in Nashville in the 1990s and forming The Ranch. When the band fell apart, so did Keith, ending up in rehab (not for the last time). But Keith did eventually reach the top, through a combination of talent, charisma, sex appeal, dogged perseverance and skin thick enough for a rhino.

As Keith has said, ‘All those detours, especially the really dark ones, got me to where I am now. I would not want to change one leaf on any tree in the whole journey.