Country star Keith Urban was less than a minute into explaining where “We Go Back” came from when the setup stopped sounding like a bit. Onstage August 21, 2026, at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., the 58-year-old described the song as the story of two kids from the same small town who paired off young, until the man ruined it. Then he broke off and added: “I will do that.”
By the time the chorus arrived, he was wiping tears from his cheeks.
The moment was caught on video from the concert. It came months after a January 2026 ruling finalized his divorce from actress Nicole Kidman, and only weeks after photographers twice caught Kidman in the company of an American businessman. At no point did Urban suggest the song — or what it pulled out of him — had anything to do with his ex-wife.
A Breakup Ballad and a Tear
Urban released “Flow State” in June 2026, seven months after a judge in Nashville formally ended his marriage, and “We Go Back” is the record’s one original song in a set otherwise given over to yacht-rock covers. He laid out the plot from the stage without any dressing up: a couple raised on the same streets, the first among their friends to become an item, and a single mistake that cost the man everything.
“They had a good thing going until the guy screwed it up,” he told the crowd.
Several years pass before the two run into each other by chance, Urban went on. The man, struck by how little she has aged, falls back into easy conversation with her — and then she mentions another man. The chorus he recounted turns on regret: he was young and foolish, and with someone new around, his chance is gone.
A few songs later, Urban dropped into a crouch at the edge of the stage, wiped away a tear and smiled at the sold-out audience, which sent back cheers and applause. He picked his microphone back up and told them nights like that one keep bringing him back to Atlantic City.
The End of a 19-Year Marriage
They met at the G’Day USA gala in Los Angeles in January 2005 and married in Sydney in June 2006. For nearly 20 years, Hollywood and country music alike treated the marriage as one of the few things that did not move. Sunday Rose was born in 2008 and Faith Margaret in 2010; the girls are now 18 and 15. Kidman, 59, is also mother to Bella and Connor, whom she adopted while married to actor Tom Cruise.
The filing came from Kidman on September 30, 2025, citing irreconcilable differences after 19 years of marriage. By then the two had reportedly been living apart since the start of that summer. Their settlement had both of them waiving rights to child and spousal support.
She filed only days after a media firestorm engulfed Urban over footage of him swapping a lyric in “The Fighter,” the song he wrote for Kidman, to name his 25-year-old touring guitarist, Maggie Baugh. Reports at the same time said he had begun seeing a woman many years his junior in Nashville’s music circles. Since then, reports have linked him to singer Karley Scott Collins as well as to Baugh, though Collins called the claim “absolutely ridiculous and untrue,” and singer Alexandra Kay, a friend of Baugh’s, said the two are not romantically involved. Baugh herself has not addressed it.
Neither has taken a public swing at the other, whatever the strain has been. In June 2026, Urban wished Nicole Mary a happy birthday on Instagram, closing the message with a long run of exclamation points.
Kidman filled the months around the split with work. She carried out her duties as a Chanel ambassador, promoted her film and television projects and brought her children along on trips overseas. On the marriage itself she has said almost nothing. Talking with Variety in March 2026, she said she was grateful for her family and intended to hold it together, and that respect stopped her from saying anything further.
She was more reflective in a British Vogue interview published August 13, 2026, speaking of a future she still cannot picture and of a period marked by fear and exposure before she decided to move forward with hope. “I had a different view of what my life was going to be, but this is what it is now,” she told British Vogue. As for love, she said she was staying open to whatever comes.
Something may have come already. On July 18, 2026, photographers spotted Kidman outside a hotel in Portofino, Italy, with American businessman Michael Reinstein, the two of them drinking Aperol Spritzes. Barely two weeks later, on July 30, Reinstein collected her from Hollywood Burbank Airport in a black Ferrari. Neither has publicly confirmed a romantic relationship.
The two appeared together again four days after the Atlantic City show. Dolly Parton died on August 25, and Kidman marked the loss on Instagram with a throwback photograph of herself, Urban and their daughters standing with Parton on a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame red carpet, captioned “We will always love you, Dolly.” It was the first image of the family together that either had posted since the divorce.
That is the backdrop that gave the August 21 Atlantic City set its weight. Urban has spent a career singing about devotion, on songs including “Somebody Like You” and “Making Memories of Us.” Here he sang about devotion falling apart — and for a few seconds, with a full house watching, the distance between the character and the singer seemed to give way.
