Entertainment Music Country Music Keith Urban, 4-Time Grammy Winner, Reveals He 'Completely Failed' Music Class in High School Urban dropped his latest studio album, 'High,' on Sept. 20 By Daniela Avila Daniela Avila Daniela Avila is an editorial assistant at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2021. Her work previously appeared on The Poly Post. People Editorial Guidelines Published on September 27, 2024 03:01PM EDT Comments Keith Urban. Photo: Terry Wyatt/Getty Even renowned musicians like Keith Urban failed a class in school. During a Thursday, Sept. 26 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, the "Blue Ain't Your Color" singer — a four-time Grammy winner — revealed he failed music class in high school. The conversation began with Kelly Clarkson, 42, asking who was "an important music teacher" for him growing up. "Oh my gosh. Mrs. Grimmer... She was my music teacher in 10th grade, and she was an amazing teacher," Urban, 56, said. "I can't read music, and a lot of the kids in the class couldn't read music [and] didn't have any theory but were amazing musicians." "But we were all gonna fail music because it was all theory-based," he continued. "She wrote an entire play for us to perform, and we were gonna be graded on the play and the performance. Everybody did it." Keith Urban Covers Sabrina Carpenter's 'Espresso' on The Tonight Show — Watch! Toward the end of the year, however, his school principal said the performance was not part of the curriculum, so Urban "failed music" — "completely failed," emphasized the artist. The story left Clarkson in utter shock. "Hilarious!" she exclaimed. "That's like Neil DeGrasse Tyson failing science." On Thursday night, Urban also appeared at the 2024 People's Choice Country Awards to perform "Messed Up as Me" from his newly-released album High. Meanwhile, on Sept. 24, Urban treated viewers on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to an impromptu performance of Sabrina Carpenter’s summer hit “Espresso.” Speaking to PEOPLE earlier this month, the "Somebody Like You" singer said he thought he'd be releasing a completely different record last year. Keith Urban. Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Keith Urban Says He 'Binged' Wife Nicole Kidman's Show The Perfect Couple and Fans Tell Him They 'Love It' (Exclusive) “I scrapped another album,” he told PEOPLE. “I finished an album in early 2023, 13 tracks, and decided to scrap pretty much the whole thing.” At the time, Urban wasn't "getting the feeling from the record" that he hoped for. “Sometimes, if I don’t know what to do, I'll start with figuring out what I don’t want to do, and I made the record that I didn't want to make apparently to figure out which one did I want to make,” he added. Close