Sometimes the best gigs happen when you’re chilling out between Panda Express and Sbarro. At least they do if you’re Keith Urban.
The country star told Ellen DeGeneres how he ended up on two songs from Taylor Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) album on Thursday (April 15), explaining that he was doing some holiday shopping when his phone rang.
“We were in Australia. I was doing some Christmas shopping at the shopping mall in December, because everybody does their shopping right before Christmas — every guy does,” Urban joked about his panicked run to buy some last-minute gifts for wife Nicole Kidman. “So I’m at the shopping mall doing my Christmas shopping and I get a text from Taylor saying, ‘I’ve got these couple of songs I’d like you to sing on, do you want to hear them?’”
Urban, of course, said yes and before he knew it Swift sent him the tracks. “I’m sitting in the foot court at the shopping center, listening to these two unreleased Taylor Swift songs,” he said. “It was an unusual place to be hearing unreleased Taylor Swift songs. But I loved the songs, and luckily got to put a vocal on both of those.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Keith wound up dueting with her on “That’s When” and singing backup on “We Were Happy” from Swift’s just-released reboot of her iconic 2008 album. Urban said his two daughters with Kidman, both big Swifties, were just super impressed that dad got a text from their hero.
Keith also reminisced about the time Taylor opened some shows for him on her original Fearless tour and pranked him on the last night by dressing up with her band as Kiss to perform a duet on his track “Kiss a Girl.” “She dressed as [former Kiss guitarist] Ace Frehley and I swear, she looked so much like Ace, with all due respect Ace Frehley, I wasn’t sure if it was him or Taylor. She completely pranked me,” he laughed.
Urban will co-host the Academy of Country Music Awards for the second year in a row on Sunday (April 18) along with Mickey Guyton.
Check out his Ellen interview below.
