Keith Urban is taking a trip down memory lane while recalling the time he posed for a Playgirl spread over two decades ago.
“It was a guy at my record company who was like, ‘Hey, you know, we can do this article in Playgirl, and they’ll do a big, long, nice piece on the record,’ and I was like, ‘Great,’ and then [he said], ‘We’ll go do a photoshoot too,’” Urban, 56, explained during the Thursday, September 26, episode of Rob Lowe’s “Literally! With Rob Lowe” podcast. “I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ Luckily, I play guitar and not harmonica.”
Urban joked that he was “apparently willing to do anything to get going” early on in his career.
When it came to Playgirl, Urban claimed that he “didn’t know there was a such a thing,” prompting the Parks and Recreation alum, 60, to reply, “Hang on now, Mr. Urban. I know you’re from Australia and things are different there.” Urban clarified that he knew about Playboy, but didn’t know about the magazine’s counterpart. “Equal titillation,” Lowe quipped.
Back in 2002, Urban posed nearly naked, save a thong, for Playgirl, with his guitar discreetly positioned. During an appearance on The Tonight Show in 2013, then-host Jay Leno dug into the archives and found the spicy photos from Urban’s shoot. “That falls into the ‘What the Hell was I thinking’ category,” Urban said at the time, per Huffpost.
Since then, Urban’s career and personal life has continued to make headlines. In 2006, Urban wed his wife, Nicole Kidman. The pair welcomed their first daughter, Sunday, in July 2008 and their second daughter, Faith, was born via gestational surrogate in December 2010. (Kidman, 57, also shares daughter Bella and son Connor with ex-husband Tom Cruise.)
While the couple has been married for 18 years, Urban admitted in May that he still tries to dazzle his wife while taking the stage. “It fires me up a bit more,” Urban told People about Kidman attending his shows. “I try to impress her.”
Keith also noted that he’s motivated to impress his late father, Robert Urban, who died at age 73 in December 2015 after a battle with cancer.
“I feel like I’m still trying to make my dad proud, and I think my dad was proud years ago,” he added. “My dad’s not even alive anymore and I still feel like I’m trying to get his approval. So certain things just stay part of my fire.”
