Before she became one of the most successful pop stars of all time, a young Taylor Swift paid her dues as an opener to country stars like Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, Faith Hill, and more. While these headliners enjoyed the height of their fame in the mid-to-late 2000s, they got a literal front-row seat to T-Swift’s stunning ascent to stardom.
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Keith Urban, who invited Swift on tour as his opening act in 2009, shared some of these unique insights in an October 2024 interview with Rolling Stone. The Australian country singer didn’t hold back on his true feelings about Swift or her “inabilities” and why her willingness to acknowledge them has made her the musical magnate she is today.
Keith Urban Gets Candid About Taylor Swift’s “Inabilities”
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume significant changes would affect a person when transitioning from a curly-haired, unknown opening act to a billionaire pop star selling out stadiums and arenas worldwide. But according to Australian country star Keith Urban, the young, freshly 20-year-old Taylor Swift who accompanied him on his 2009 “Escape Together” concert tour is the same woman who took the entire world by storm with her record-breaking “Eras” tour 14 years later.
“What she is now, she was that when she was opening for me,” Urban told Rolling Stone. “Her vision was way off into the future. She sees where she’s going to be, crystal clear. That’s the kind of thing that helped her navigate through so many waters that would have killed any other artist. So much negativity, so much hatred from people, so much, God, just straight-up s*** that she got flung in all directions from people. But she clearly had her sights on the future and her abilities.”
“What I love about Taylor is she was always willing to confront her inabilities and work on them,” Urban continued. “She worked on being a better singer[ [and] performer. She was always a great writer—she worked on all of it [and] got better and better and better.”
The Aussie Star’s Tour Showed T-Swift Never Took Herself Too Seriously
Taylor Swift’s undeniable star power isn’t the only lasting impression she made while opening for Keith Urban in 2009. Her time on the road with the Australian country star is also a beautiful and hilarious reminder that, despite having a career that one could only describe as massively, seriously successful, Swift has never taken herself as a person too seriously—not when she was 20, and certainly not now.
No moment from Urban’s “Escape Together” tour captures this comic humility quite like the time Swift, along with other touring musicians and dancers, pranked Urban in the middle of one of his most popular songs by walking out on stage dressed like American rock band KISS. As Urban captivated the crowd with a rendition of his 2009 smash hit “Kiss a Girl,” Swift walked out on stage in full KISS regalia. (She was Ace “The Spaceman” Frehley, if you were wondering.)
Urban’s time and first impressions of Swift prove just how much the latter artist has kept her sights locked on the long game. While there’s no way to know whether that spring-green 20-something could possibly fathom the success she would achieve less than 15 years later, we think it’s safe to assume she probably had a pretty good idea.
Photo by George Pimentel/LP5/Getty Images for TAS
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