Keith Urban had spent less than a minute setting up the story behind “We Go Back” when he added three words about himself, and the room caught the joke that wasn’t quite a joke. Onstage August 21, 2026, at Hard Rock Live at Etess Arena in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the 58-year-old country star described the song as a story about two people from a small town who were the first of their friends to fall in love. “They had a good thing going, until the guy screwed it up,” he told the crowd. “I will do that.”
By the time the chorus came around, he was brushing tears off his cheeks.
Video from the concert captured the scene. His divorce from actress Nicole Kidman had been finalized by a January 2026 ruling, and the performance followed that by months; it also followed by only weeks two occasions on which photographers spotted Kidman with an American businessman. No connection to his ex-wife was ever drawn by Urban, either for the song or for the emotion it pulled out of him.
A Breakup Ballad and a Tear
“We Go Back” is the lone original on “Flow State,” the album of yacht-rock covers Urban put out on June 12, five months after a judge in Tennessee signed off on his divorce. The plot he sketched from the stage carried no embellishment. Two kids grew up on the same streets; they were the first couple anyone in their circle could name; and then a single mistake cost the man everything he had.
A chance reunion comes several years later, he told the crowd. Struck by how little time seems to have touched her, the man falls back into easy conversation — and then she mentions another man. Regret powers the chorus, as he told it: the man admits he was young and foolish, and that his chance has passed now that someone new is around.
The lip of the stage was where Urban ended up a few songs later, crouching down, wiping away a tear and grinning at the sold-out audience. Cheers and applause came back at him. It was the first of two nights at the venue, per the property’s calendar; he played again on August 22. Retrieving his microphone, Urban said evenings like that one were why he keeps coming back.
The End of a 19-Year Marriage
They first met at the G’Day USA gala in Los Angeles in January 2005, and the wedding followed in Sydney in June 2006. For nearly 20 years, the two were treated as a rare fixed point in both Hollywood and country music. Sunday Rose, their daughter, arrived in 2008, and a second daughter, Faith Margaret, followed in 2010; at 18 and 15, the girls are teenagers now. Bella and Connor, adopted during her marriage to actor Tom Cruise, are also children of Kidman, 59.
Citing irreconcilable differences after 19 years of marriage, Kidman filed for divorce on September 30, 2025. The couple were reported to have been living apart since early that summer, though the petition itself listed September 30 as the date of separation. Their settlement had both agreeing to waive rights to child and spousal support.
Four days before that filing, Urban changed a line of “The Fighter” — the song he has said was inspired by his relationship with Kidman — from “baby I’ll be the fighter” to “Maggie I’ll be your guitar player,” naming Maggie Baugh, the 25-year-old guitarist on his touring band. Baugh posted the video herself on September 26. The filing also arrived alongside reports that a woman many years younger, from Nashville’s music circles, had become his romantic interest. Singer Karley Scott Collins and Baugh have both been tied to him in reports since. Collins called the claim “absolutely RIDICULOUS and untrue.” Baugh has not addressed it publicly; her friend the singer Alexandra Kay said Baugh “has nothing to do with that whole relationship.”
Whatever the strain, neither has traded public blows with the other. Kidman’s birthday drew a post from Urban on Instagram in June 2026, in which he wrote “happy birthday nicole mary,” all in lowercase, and closed with a long string of exclamation points.
The months around the split kept Kidman busy: duties as a Chanel ambassador, publicity for her film and television work, travels abroad with her children along. The marriage itself is a subject on which she has offered almost nothing. Variety, in a March 2026 conversation, heard her say she was grateful for her family and meant to hold it together; respect, she added, kept her from saying more.
Published August 13, a British Vogue interview caught her in a more introspective mood, describing a stretch of time marked by fear and exposure before she resolved to press ahead hopefully. “You make all these plans and you have all these ideas of what it’s all going to be like and then it’s… not. You have to adjust. You adapt. The future, it’s completely unknown to me right now,” she told British Vogue. “I had a different view of what my life was going to be, but this is what it is now.” On love ahead of her, she said she was “moving on, embracing love, staying open, keeping the heart open and the possibilities.” She also told British Vogue: “I don’t overthink things and I’m probably not that analytical. I’m far more feeling-centred and I lead with my heart.”
Something may already have arrived. On July 18, photographers caught Kidman outside a hotel in Portofino, Italy, alongside American private equity businessman Michael Reinstein, the pair sipping Aperol Spritzes. A black Ferrari carried her out of Hollywood Burbank Airport barely two weeks later, on July 30, with Reinstein at the wheel to collect her. Neither has publicly confirmed a romantic relationship.
Four days after the Atlantic City show, the two surfaced together again. Dolly Parton died on August 25, and Kidman marked it on Instagram with a photograph of herself, Parton, Urban and their daughters at the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame gala in 2023, captioned “We will always love you, Dolly.” Urban posted his own tribute the same day: “Heartbroken today. Dolly Parton, honestly…. I have no words right now.” All of that background is what lent the Atlantic City set on August 21 its particular weight. Urban, whose catalog includes “Somebody Like You” and “Making Memories of Us,” built a career on songs about devotion. Collapse was the subject this time — and for a few seconds, with a full house watching, the distance between the character and the singer seemed to be more than he could hold.