Keith Urban, 2007

Keith Urban (b. 1967) and his parents moved to Queensland from New Zealand when he was a small boy. Well before he reached his teens he was singing and playing guitar in public, appearing on Reg Lindsay's Country Hour and other television programs and playing regularly on stage at the Northern Suburbs Country Music Club near Caboolture. In 1990 he won the Toyota Starmaker Award, and he released his first, self-titled, album in 1991. He moved to the USA the following year, and having broken a cocaine addiction acquired while working in Nashville, issued his first solo American album in 1999. It brought him the first of his plethora of Top Ten hits, Grammys, Country Music Association Awards, Golden Guitars, ARIAs and more. His subsequent solo studio albums include Be Here (2004), Love, Pain and the Whole Crazy Thing (2006), Defying Gravity (2009) and Get Closer (2010). Urban is in high demand as a session and backing guitarist, accompanying the likes of the Dixie Chicks, Garth Brooks and Kenny Chesney. Although each of his last five albums has achieved gold or platinum sales in the US, Canada and Australia, Urban became a household name in this country only after marrying actor Nicole Kidman in Sydney in 2006.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2011
© Peter Brew-Bevan