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Monday, March 30, 2009

Keith Urban Ranks With Beatles, Rolling Stones

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Industry heavy hitters gathered in BMI's Music Row lobby on March 16, 2009 to recognize a cluster of substantial milestones for superstar Keith Urban. In addition to celebrating the release of his new CD, Defying Gravity, BMI also toasted his 10th chart-topper "Sweet Thing," and his 11 song-deep list of BMI Million-Air award-winning compositions, which he either wrote or co-wrote. In addition to witnessing the awards presentation, guests enjoyed an intimate performance by Keith and his band. In this photo, Keith inspects his new BMI signature Takamine guitar. Photo by John Russell, courtesy of BMI.

March 30, 2009 — When Keith Urban was honored this month with a party at BMI's Nashville office, the songwriting agency buried him under a pile of awards, including one for hitting No. 1 with "Sweet Thing" and a bevy recognizing 16 million radio plays of his singles.
Sort of lost in that onslaught of information was the achievement of "Somebody Like You," which has logged a whopping 3 million broadcasts since its release in 2002. Three million is a huge nu mber — it puts that song on par in airplay with some other classics that have been in circulation for decades, including the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love," the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar," Dolly Parton's "9 To 5," Hank Williams' "Your Cheatin' Heart," Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson's "Good Hearted Woman" and Janis Joplin's "Me And Bobby McGee."
That's some pretty heady stuff, though the one person who seems least impressed by the accomplishment is Keith himself.
"That's from a numbers standpoint, and I think there's a lot more to be said for those artists than just numbers," he notes. "To be in the numbers game with them is a fascinating statistic in itself."
But that's hardly the only numbers game Keith is playing these days. It's one day until the release of his new album, Defying Gravity, and he hopes it generates enough sales to land him at No. 1 on the country album chart — and maybe the pop chart as well. He'll be on a number of TV shows this week to support it — including The Ellen DeGeneres Show and NBC's Today show on Wednesday — and he's lined up more than 50 cities for his upcoming Escape Together World Tour. Eight different acts have signed up to open for him during the run of dates, including Sugarland, Taylor Swift, Jason Alde an, Dierks Bentley, Little Big Town, the Zac Brown Band, Lady Antebellum and Glen Campbell.
Two more numbers: Keith's new single "Kiss A Girl" is at No. 23 on the USA Today Mediabase country singles chart, while "Sweet Thing" hangs in at No. 11.

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