Keith Urban is set to co-host the 56th annual ACM Awards with Mickey Guyton on Sunday night, but last weekend was pretty big, too. The Aussie-American superstar was featured in two new Taylor Swift songs as part of her re-recorded Fearless (Taylor’s Version) release, and on The Ellen Degeneres Show Thursday (April 15), he gave fans the backstory.
Chatting with his cheerful host via video call, Urban explained that he first got the ask from Swift over text, and of course he was interested in collaborating with his former tour mate. He needed to hear the songs first, though, and that was the weird part. He wasn’t exactly in the most secure location to listen to Swift’s hyper-secret, unreleased tracks.
“Its the craziest story. We were in Australia, and I was doing some Christmas shopping at the shopping mall. … 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?’ And I said ‘Sure!’” Urban explains. “So she sends me the songs, and I’m sitting in the food court at the shopping center listening to these two unreleased Taylor Swift songs … 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.”
We now know those tracks are “That’s When” — which features Urban in a reflective, post-breakup duet — and “We Were Happy” — with Urban contributing harmony vocals in the background. It’s an interesting mental image, for sure, to picture Urban listening to early mixes of those songs while slurping on a slushy, or perhaps munching on a warm pretzel. Who knows what else goes down in public like that!
Meanwhile, the hit maker also showed off another pop-star collab, delivering an acoustic rendition of “One Too Many.” That dramatic track features Pink in its original form, and on Sunday (April 18), Keith Urban and Pink are up for ACM Music Event of the Year for it. Fans can tune in to CBS at 8 p.m. ET to see if they win.