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Keith Urban on the Art of "Dwighting" It

Urban Confesses His Unlikely Style Icon

It’s a new verb all the cool country kids should adopt immediately: the art of “Dwighting.”

If you’ve visited East Nashville lately or recently caught wind of any new hipster country band poster, you’ve probably seen the practice in motion without even realizing it.

It seems Dwight Yoakam's style circa 1990 is back: Bolero jackets, bolo ties, snakeskin boots and jeans so tight you couldn’t hide a secret in them.

Keith Urban’s right there with them -- or at least he was back then. Urban has always been a Yoakam fan, but we had no idea that he was such a fan of the country legend's signature style, as well; so much so that he basically adopted it himself and even gave it a catchphrase: “dwighting.”

Urban spilled the beans to Yoakam during their recent performance together at Stagecoach Country Music Festival in California, and we wish we could’ve seen the look on Yoakam’s face for this one:

“I told Dwight, ‘I hate saying this, Dwight, but I have a publicity picture of me from 1990 where I got tight stonewashed jeans with Conchos all the way up the side of my pants and a Bolero type suit jacket with the bolo tie and the snakeskin boots, I’ve got it all going on. I’m ‘Dwighting’ it to the hilt,” Urban said with a laugh.

In case there's still confusion over the definition of "dwighting," we think it looks a little something like this:

“Dwight” | verb | (dwighted; dwighting)

The practice of acting, dressing, speaking or singing in a manner as Dwight Yoakam would do; generally emulating the mannerisms and style of the two-time Grammy winner: “I’m Dwighting it to the hilt.”

Urban’s “dwighting” has been apparent to others since the early days of his career. Fortunate Son, an authorized biography of Urban from Australian author Jeff Apter, has en excerpt on Urban’s time on the Australian talent show Star Maker in 1990 when ABC Rural broadcaster Colin Munro called a then 22-year-old Urban an “image of the '90s” and likened him to a then-rising Yoakam.

So, it was only inevitable that years later, the two would join forces to blow the crowds away at one of country music’s biggest festivals. The stars aligned, both figuratively and literally in their case, tight jeans and all.

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