MUSIC PLAY URBAN WANTS TO SHAKE OFF LABELS

Urban was thrown by how his song Female, an ode to respecting women, was seen as a response to sexual harassment.

Urban performed the song at the Country Music Awards in November and many people assumed it was inspired by the # MeToo movement.

The song, from his new album Graffiti U, alludes to harassment in one verse but he says it’s about much more than that.

“Having girls, nine and seven, I felt it was a really important song,” he said. “I was thrown that it got labelled a sort of sexual harassment response song.

“There’s two lines in the second verse that speak to that and everything else in that song is just this beautiful prayer of hope and gratitude.”

The empowering song is just one of 13 new tracks on Urban’s album, which has already gone to the top spot in the US country charts. Not that Urban believes it neatly fits that genre. “It’s its own thing,” he said. “I think you just make music that’s really honest and all my music has always been that way, it’s just my muse has moved a little bit to wherever it is now.”

He says his Oscar- winning wife Nicole Kidman inspired him with her approach to her own art.

“Nic will try anything. She doesn’t filter anything when she’s trying something,” he said. “All that stuff can come afterwards, choosing whether you want to say that or do that but not while you’re doing it.”

Several of the album’s songs were written with Kidman in mind, in particular Gemini which describes her as “a maniac in the bed, but a brainiac in her head”.

Julia Michaels, who co- wrote Justin Bieber’s Sorry and Ed Sheeran’s Dive, collaborated with Urban on the track and encouraged him to include that line.

“She goes: ‘ It’s a fun song, just sing it’. I couldn’t argue with that logic.”