Keith Urban reveals how his partying days and battle with substance abuse inspired his new record after 18 years of sobriety: ‘I’ve lived a life’

Keith Urban has revealed how his wild days of partying in bars, while struggling with drug abuse in the past, inspired his upcoming album High.

The 56-year-old singer has been sober for 18 years after a public battle with drug and alcohol abuse. He last checked into rehab four months after marrying Nicole Kidman in 2006.

Keith has been reminiscing about the days when he and his friends would party the night away in the pub and has shared how he has relived some of those moments in his new music.

He unveiled the music video for his recently released track Messed Up As Me, inspired by the many difficult situations he found himself in at the time.

“The video takes place from 2:45 in the morning until sunrise. A lot of things happen in those hours, and I’m in every scene,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

“I got a lot of stuff to mine, you know,” he says from Nashville. “This record is definitely not just about where I’m at; that would make it a very linear record.

‘Certainly, I’ve lived a whole life and been in contact with a lot of people, and a lot of those people are represented in these songs.’

The song’s music video shows Keith looking somber and stressed as he sits in a warehouse-like room, singing lyrics about drinking and doing shots.

The poignant words refer to his own struggle with alcoholism and begin with the opening lines: ‘When I get blue, I get dark blue / When I have one, I always have a few.’

The Grammy Award-winning artist also sings about “tequila taking its toll” and feeling “confused” and “all alone” in the emotional track.

Keith’s upcoming album High, out September 20, also features Keith’s collaboration with Lainey Wilson on the track Go Home WU, which also chronicles a wild Saturday night.

Keith sings earnestly about what it’s like to be in the red, yet still “shake things up” and “live the big life in a small-town bar.”

The chorus adds, “Oh, I know it’s closing time and / I won’t lie, yeah, I’ve had more than a few (a few) / And you know I shouldn’t really be driving / I guess I better come home with you.”

Keith had previously publicly struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, prompting his actress wife Nicole, 57, to stage an intervention to help him get sober.

He checked into rehab several times, last checking into the Betty Ford Center in October 2006, just four months after marrying Nicole.

Keith (pictured in 2002) has revealed that the music video for his recently released track Messed Up As Me was inspired by his wild nights of partying and the difficult situations he found himself in

“I was very happy that Nic stepped in,” Keith said earlier, adding that his reckless behavior “caused the implosion of my new marriage.”

Keith once said of Nicole’s decision to stay with him during his third stint in rehab in eight years, “She should have just walked.”

Earlier this year, Keith admitted that Nicole had shown him “what love in action really is” when his drug problems came to light after they married in 2006.

“After four months of marriage, I’ve now been in rehab for three months,” Keith said in a moving speech in April when Nicole received the AFI Life Achievement Award.

“Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even a few of her own, and she chose love. And here we are 18 years later.”

During his emotional speech, Nicole, who was sitting with their two daughters Sunday Rose, 15, and Faith Margaret, 13, burst into tears.

Keith, who grew up with his late father Robert’s heavy drinking, previously said it “took him a long time to get sober” because he didn’t “recognise” his alcoholism.

“I didn’t drink like my dad, so I compared everything to him,” he said in a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone.

‘But I was finally able to make the right choice in my life, which I wish for my father [who died in 2015] would have made.’

The singer, 56, has been sober for 18 years after a public battle with drug and alcohol abuse, last checking into rehab four months after his 2006 marriage to Nicole Kidman.

Keith has been candid about his past struggles with alcohol addiction, revealing in 2018 that he wished he had gotten sober earlier in his life.

“I wish I had gotten sober a lot sooner, but it is what it is,” he said.

“I knew I wasn’t living up to my full potential, and that was what started to eat away at me. I was enslaved… I was living a very, very small life.”

Keith also admitted that he was “bad at relationships” before he met Nicole, and that the lyrics of his songs about love were far removed from reality.

“I wrote songs about love and relationships. I remember writing ‘Somebody Like You’ and playing it to my girlfriend at the time. She looked at me and said, ‘You’re a fucking hypocrite.’ I couldn’t deny that,” he added.