Keith Urban made a loud statement at the CMA Awards on Wednesday, November, 8. The country singer performed a song written in response to the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal called “Female.”
Urban’s performance was extremely simple and beautiful. He stood in the center of the stage solo and sang the song while playing the guitar. The lyrics streamed on the stage behind him — and they were quite powerful lyrics.
“When somebody laughs and implies that she asked for it / Just cause she was wearing a skirt / Oh is that how that works?” It also referenced Beyonce‘s “Girls (Run the World),” with the line: “When you hear a song saying you run the world / Do you believe it?”
Capitol Nashville released the song, written by Shane McAnally, Nicolle Galyon and Ross Copperman, just hours before the performance. Urban, 50, recorded it on Halloween and wanted to release it as soon as possible, Billboard reports.
“As a husband and a father of two young girls, it affects me in a lot of ways,” Urban, who took home the CMA Award for Single of the Year before his performance, told the site. “And as a son — my mother is alive. It just speaks to all of the females in my life, particularly. For a guy who grew up with no sisters in a house of boys, it’s incredible how now I’m surrounded by girls. But not only in my house; I employ a huge amount of women in my team. The song just hit me for so many reasons.”
Copperman confirmed to the Associated Press that the song was written about Weinstein. “We’re in a room and we’re like, ‘What can we do about this?’” he said. “And that’s the one thing we can do is write songs.”
“After Vegas, to be honest, I haven’t wanted to do anything other than write songs that make an impact,” Copperman added. “So that’s all I’ve been doing. We got to talking that day, and then Shane McAnally was like, ‘I’ve had this title in my phone a long time — I’ve never known how to do it — called ‘Female.’ Me and Nicolle were like, ‘Uh, yes, we’re doing that.’ We thought the best way to write it was to just list things in the chorus.”
