Keith Urban Performs Song on ‘The Road’ About ‘Soul-Sucking Routine’ Before Nicole Kidman Divorce

Before his split from Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban performed a song on his new CBS show The Road about “wanting to break out of a soul-sucking” routine.

During the series premiere of The Road, which aired on Sunday, October 19, Urban, 57, took the stage to sing “Straight Line” off his most recent album, High. Urban previously reflected on the message behind the track ahead of his split from Kidman, 58.

“This is the song that kicks off an album I’m jonesing to share with you all. I chose it first for a lot of reasons, but particularly because I think it represents an energy and spirit that became a through line of the whole record,” Urban wrote via Instagram in February 2024. “I’m gonna cover a lot of themes, emotions and vibes on this album but a very human spirit runs through them all.”

Urban credited “Straight Line” for starting a conversation about making a change.

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“‘Straight Line’ is wanting to break out of a soul-sucking routine that you might be stuck in: maybe in a relationship, a job, with creativity, with yourself…whatever it is !!” he continued at the time. “It’s a message of feeling alive again and getting out from under that dark cloud. If you’ve seen us in concert, I hope it gives you that same feeling.”

Earlier in the episode, Urban opened up about the highs and lows of life on tour.

“Where do we start? It’s a calling, and you’re going to do it or you’re not going to make it,” he explained. “When you wake up on a tour bus at 3:30 in the morning and you’re sick as a dog, you’re in the middle of nowhere and you’ve got to play your fifth show later that night, and you haven’t slept, and you miss your friends, and you’re missing your family, and you’re completely lonely and miserable and sick — and you say to yourself, ‘Why am I doing this?’”

Urban added: “The only answer can be: because this is what I’m born to do. We’re going to find out who’s made for that stuff [on this show].”

Keith Urban Lauren “Lo” Smith/CBS

The Road follows 12 emerging musicians competing as opening acts for Urban while he tours across America. The contestants advance to the next city based on the reaction from the crowds at their respective shows. By the end of the season, only one act is left standing to take home $250,000 and a record deal.

One month before The Road premiered, Us Weekly confirmed in September that Kidman and Urban split after 19 years of marriage. They originally met in 2005 following her divorce from Tom Cruise. After one year of dating, Kidman and Urban got married and expanded their family in 2008 with the arrival of daughter Sunday Rose. Two years later, Kidman and Urban welcomed daughter Faith via surrogate. (Kidman is also the mother of daughter Isabella and son Connor, whom she adopted with Cruise.)

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“I have the most extraordinary partner in life. I will always say that about him,” Kidman said in a 2019 interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I’m one of the very fortunate women in the world to have had a wonderful father, and I have a wonderful husband, and I’m just very — I love to be able to say that because to talk about the good men that have influenced me and affected me.”

Kidman was also honest about the work that went into her marriage.

“We’re always working through stuff, but it’s very much love-based, so there’s an enormous amount of give and take,” she explained in the September 2021 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. “I want him to have the best life he can have, and he responds the same way. We really love parenting together.”

At the time, Kidman addressed her high-profile split from Cruise in 2001, adding, “I was young. I think I offered it up? Maybe I’ve gotten a bit more trepidatious, but I’m always trying to be as open as possible.”

She continued: “I just prefer to live in the world that way. I’m wary at times, and I’ve been hurt, but at the same time I much prefer a warm approach rather than a prickly shutdown approach. My husband, Keith, says that when he met me, he said, ‘How’s your heart?’ And I apparently responded, ‘Open.’”

The Road airs on CBS Sundays before streaming on Paramount+. The show will air at 9:30 p.m. ET on October 26 and November 2.