Keith Urban has "a little PTSD" when he thinks about lockdown.
The 52-year-old singer spent lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic at his Nashville estate, and has said that whilst he’s now managed to fly out to Byron Bay in Australia with his wife Nicole Kidman, he thinks being cooped up inside for months on end has messed with his mental health.
Keith made his comments in relation to his new single, ‘Out The Cage’ which explores the feelings that come with being in lockdown, including being confined, missing socialisation and the loss of freedom.
Speaking to Stellar magazine inside Australia’s The Sunday Telegraph newspaper, he explained: "We’d been in lockdown since March. I was ready to get out and do things, I poured it into that song. I still have a little PTSD about lockdown.
"We’re in Byron Bay now and all I can think about is Nashville not that long ago. I’m like a little caged animal timidly walking around going, ‘I don’t know about this freedom, this feels a little fishy.’ "
And although Keith found lockdown to be stressful, he recently admitted the change wasn’t too difficult for his and Nicole’s children – Sunday, 11, and nine-year-old Faith – because they’re already used to doing their schoolwork outside of the classroom because of their parents’ careers.
Keith – who was born in New Zealand and raised in Australia – said: "We were in Nashville the whole time. We stayed there until just recently when we were able to come down to Australia for Nic to shoot a film here.
"Nashville has been a great town for us, a great place for us to nest and raise a family. It’s very family-centric.
"And the girls are not unaccustomed to homeschooling and remote learning. We travel around when Nic is shooting a film and we relocate to somewhere sometimes for a month or two. The girls do remote learning.
"So it wasn’t a big change for them but not seeing friends has probably been the hardest thing."