Mr Nicole Kidman brings the Nashville spirit to Britain

Country

Keith Urban Hammersmith Apollo, London W6

★★★★ ★

James Hall

Keith Urban is big news in the US. Australia too. But here in the UK he remains best known as the bloke with the blonde hair who stands on the red carpet next to his wife Nicole Kidman. That’s a shame, because for all his occasionally cheesy charm he’s an engaging showman capable of holding audiences in the palm of his hand.

This was essentially an arena concert packed into a theatre. You don’t sell 15 million records, win four Grammys, have 20 number ones in the US Country charts and duet with Taylor Swift without knowing how to perform. And Urban – in tight, ripped black jeans and black jacket, and surrounded by five extremely accomplished musicians – brought polished Nashville energy to west London.

Opening song Days Go By

summed up the mild outlaw energy of many of Urban’s songs. “I’m changing lanes and talkin’ on the phone/ I’m drivin’ way too fast/ And the interstate’s jammed with gunners like me,” he sang. The cowboy affect was only mildly diluted when Urban shouted “Holly s---, it looks amazing in here!” in an Aussie accent that was more Lassiters than Las Vegas.

But this is all part of Urban’s shtick. You get the sense he revels in being the plucky outsider. Born in New Zealand, he moved to Australia as a teenager before heading to Nashville in 1992, where he eventually found fame.

His roving backstory gifts him the opportunity to gleefully leap between genres – one minute he was singing ballad Parallel Line

(co-written with Ed Sheeran); the next he was playing the banjo stomp of Somebody Like You.

It made for a more – not less – interesting night, with fans lapping it up. He invited one – Sarah from Denmark – up on stage for a duet, selecting her because she was holding up a sign. As with so many things in this concert, trends were less important than connection between performer and audience.

Urban moved to a smaller stage for a short acoustic section, playing Adele’s Easy On Me, which he seemed to suggest was about overcoming unaccountable toxicity (I thought it was about divorce). But he was soon back on the main stage, duetting on The Fighter with an on-screen Carrie Underwood.

If the point of live music is to put smiles on people’s faces, Urban did it in spades. If Britain doesn’t quite “get” Urban, then rather than it being our problem perhaps it’s to our advantage. It means we still get to see him in relatively small venues like this.