Keith Urban is a pretty man.

Seeing him perform last week was my first venture into the world of live country music. My initiation was harmless and quite enjoyable, despite facing rolled eyes and verbal quips from my fellow Northwesterners.

College students love to hate country music. Half the Facebook.com profiles I see include the phrase “anything but country” in the “favorite music” section. And with songs such as Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” blasting the airwaves, I don’t blame them sometimes. But one friend actually cringed when I told her I just went to my first country concert. She says most people think of it as “hick music” and don’t want to be associated with the stereotypical country bumpkin.

To that I say: What about all the people I see on campus walking around in cowboy boots and hats? They obviously find country-western fashion hip, even if they don’t respect the music. Unless it’s that Big & Rich song, “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” in which case everybody, like, loves country and wouldn’t dare call it just a bunch of “redneck music.”

While it’s true that modern country music is a huge departure from the days of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, the genre is still full of talented vocalists, musicians and writers. Urban, for example, won a Best Male Vocal Country Performance Grammy last week for his song “You’ll Think of Me.”

I own all three of Urban’s albums, and my moderately sized music collection is speckled with the occasional country-music mix and SheDaisy (commonly referred to as the poor man’s Dixie Chicks) album. I listen to them because I find the songs catchy and, in the case of Urban, instrumentally complex and lyrically meaningful. Urban played the shit out of his guitar live, and his devotion to his fans was palpable. What music fan can brush aside that kind of musicianship, regardless of his or her favorite genre? OK, and it didn’t hurt to look at his dark golden, flowing locks and toned physique onstage, either.

I understand Urban’s songs aren’t even necessarily thought of as country music by purists who see him as a cross-over artist into the pop world, a la Faith Hill and Shania Twain. But he closed his show with a Brooks and Dunn cover – and I admit I only know it was a Brooks and Dunn cover because my good friend and country-music aficionado told me so – and all the cowboy hat-wearing fans went crazy for his version of the song, and they all knew every single word.

So he must be doing something right to draw in the true fans along with the occasional country newbie like me. I think it’s all in the hair. (Or, gasp, maybe the music just really is that good.)4

Medill senior Kim Jeffries is the PLAY editor. Se can be reached at [email protected].