Keith Urban undoubtedly had a difficult year, but he went out on a high note on New Year’s Eve.
The country singer, 58, performed upbeat renditions of his song “Straight Line” and New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give” during New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash on Wednesday, December 31. Urban sported a black shirt and dark jeans while he crooned lyrics from “Straight Line” such as, “I ain’t buyin’ this life’s gotta be such a mother / ‘Cause we kinda got it all when we got each other / You and me used to be like a year-round summer / Let’s go back / Oh, hit the gas.”
The live New Year’s Eve special — which aired on CBS and Paramount+ — was hosted by comedian Bert Kreischer and country music star Hardy and featured additional performances by Jason Aldean, Lainey Wilson, Bailey Zimmerman, Brooks and Dunn, Dwight Yoakam and more.
Urban’s New Year’s Eve outing comes three months after his split from estranged wife Nicole Kidman made headlines in September. One day after the news broke, she filed for divorce, citing “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their separation. The pair were married for nearly 20 years and share daughters Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith, 15.
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“They had been quietly separated for a while now but needed time to figure out if they were going to actually divorce,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly in October. “She had faith they could work it out.”
According to the insider, Urban was the one who pulled the plug on his marriage to Kidman, 58.
“This wasn’t Nicole’s decision, and she is devastated,” the source continued. “Her trust was lost, and it was too far gone. Nicole had been trying to get them to work on their marriage and did not want this to get out to the public. She didn’t tell many friends what was really going on with them and was holding this in for months.”
While Urban and Kidman once appeared to be the ideal A-list couple, they were actually spending “a lot of time apart due to work commitments” and living “separate lives” behind the scenes.
“Nicole and Keith were not on the same page,” the insider told Us. “Rumors around town have been circling that they were living apart, were focused on their own projects and that Keith had moved on. They are moving in two different directions, and their worlds are not overlapping as much as they once did. The distance between them had grown more obvious recently.”
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Later in October, a source revealed that Kidman was in a “good headspace” amid her divorce from Urban, but “the hardest part” of the situation was “navigating the dynamic with their daughters.”
“The last thing Nicole wanted was a broken family,” the insider told Us, adding that Kidman “raised her daughters to be strong and is leading by example for them.”
As a new single mom, Kidman planned to “focus on creating new traditions with her daughters and keeping their home life as steady and loving as possible.”
Urban, for his part, “has moved on and has been open with Nicole about where he stands,” a source told Us in October, noting that their divorce was a “long time coming.”
Per the insider, “The two had grown apart quietly over time, and by the end, the decision to separate was more about acceptance than surprise.”
