Almost to a man, musicians will tell you they took up the guitar to meet girls.
Not Keith Urban, who brings his "Get Closer 2011 World Tour" to the Wells Fargo Center Friday night.
"I just wanted to get my dad's attention," says the sizzling country star. "Whatever he was into, I was going to do that."
As it happens, Urban's father was crazy about the music of Nashville, an unusual choice for a resident of Brisbane, Australia.
"I was fortunate that my dad's records were contemporary - Glen Campbell, Ronnie Milsap," says Urban, 43. "Their songs had huge pop appeal. That's where the pop influence in my music comes from."
His mainstream style has made him a CMA, ACM, Grammy, and People's Choice winner.
The roots of his electrifying performance energy come from his youthful apprenticeship in Rusty & The Ayers Rockettes, a country cover band fronted by a flamboyant Florida exile.
"Rusty was a great entertainer and showman," Urban says. "He really knew how to read an audience."
Urban may have gotten into the business to impress his dad, but he hasn't done badly with the ladies. He's married to movie star (and fellow Aussie) Nicole Kidman.
His devotion to his wife and their two daughters dictates a spotty tour schedule - generally four days on and three days off.
"I do lots of traveling back and forth to our home in Nashville," he says.
If you want to make Keith happy Friday night, stick around for the end of the show.
He knows he's doing his job if "very few people have left by the encore." Most nights, the encore in his two-hour-plus show is ushered in with "Tonight I Wanna Cry."
Even with a full house at Wells Fargo, it will be hard to match one of Urban's first Philadelphia shows - at the mammoth Live 8 in 2005 on the Parkway.
"That was the biggest crowd I've ever seen," he says. "The first 20,000 or so looked real, then it looked like a CGI effect of people as far as the eye could see."