Our exclusive/made-up sit down with Keith Urban!

By Nick Bhasin

An example:
When asked about the impact of the family love in his life on his music, he says, ‘It's been a profound impact [on my song writing], to meet somebody who offered me a life and helped me become the person I wanted to be. [For instance] my wife and I had been out a couple of times and I wondered how she felt about me. It came out as, “How is your heart?” She said, “It's open.” My God, what a beautiful answer.’

Guess what one of his songs is called? That’s right, My Heart Is Open.

Well, when we sat down with Keith, we expected nothing less than a love-jamboree, full of fantastic quotes like that one.

And he delivered.

As Keith sits down across from us on an oversized velvet armchair, smoking a huge pipe and wearing a curiously large witch’s hat, one thing is certain: This guy is in love.

‘I am in love,’ Keith says with the pipe still in his mouth, so it sounds a little bit like, ‘I run with stove.’ Either way, you know what he’s talking about.

When I ask him what love means to him, Keith says, ‘Love means getting up in the morning, making some eggs, burning them, throwing them away, starting over again, burning them again, throwing those away, starting over again, burning them again, throwing the frying pan across the kitchen, cleaning up the mess, ordering out for eggs, having them show up at your front door, somehow burning those eggs, and then the love of your life just looks at you and says, “They’re just eggs. We’re a family and your family loves you. Your family also wants pancakes.” That’s what love means to me, you know?’

When we ask Keith to repeat his answer because we weren’t listening, the country crooner doesn’t bat an eye and launches right into it again. ‘Love means getting up in the morning…’

When we interrupt him to say we’re just kidding, he says, ‘There’s nothing funny about love.’

When we say, ‘What about Love Happens, the delightful film starring Jennifer Aniston?’ he says, ‘Love doesn’t just happen. You have to make it happen.’

When we ask what that means, he says, ‘I didn’t say anything. That was love talking.’

Then the lights started to flicker and Keith started to laugh and laugh, which we decided was too weird for us. Keith continued to laugh and smoke his pipe as we gathered our things and backed out of the room.

Then we had to laugh to ourselves, because isn’t that what love is all about? Laughing and backing out of rooms?