Keith Urban shared thoughts about “life on the road” in a new clip, as speculation grows about his relationship with one of his guitar players.
Urban, 57, will headline and executive produce CBS’ upcoming reality music competition series The Road, where several emerging artists compete to be his opening act. Life on the road can be “completely lonely and miserable,” Urban says in the series’ first episode, according to the Daily Mail’s first look. But some fans of his wife Nicole Kidman believe Urban consoled himself by striking up a relationship with his 25-year-old tour guitar player Maggie Baugh.
Baugh ignited affair rumors when she posted a video of herself and Urban on stage together that fans interpreted as flirtatious, as he’d altered a song he’d previously dedicated to Kidman to say Maggie’s name instead. Kidman, 58, filed for a divorce to end their 19-year marriage days later. Urban fans say lyric changes are not unusual in the music star’s live performances, however.
Still, the Daily Mail reported at the time that Urban was romantically involved with a “younger woman in the industry” its sources claim is the talk of Nashville, further fueling speculation.
Baugh’s social media posts were flooded with angry messages from Kidman fans calling Baugh “the other woman” and vowing never to support her music. Still, the multi-instrumentalist has never addressed the rumors despite the slew of media attention. Instead, she directed all the new eyeballs to her music by dropping a pensive single addressing “#mentalhealth.” Urban has also yet to comment.
The singer shares his insights into tour life in The Road, which premieres Oct. 19 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS. Life on the road “is a calling, and you’re going to do it or you’re not going to make it,” he says. “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?’ The only answer can be: Because this is what I’m born to do.’”
Baugh shares some of her own struggles on her new single “The Devil Win,” which she is currently promoting on TikTok and Instagram, singing “I don’t know how to heal my soul / Or how to fight this feeling and it’s a damn good place to go / No matter how close I get to the burning edge / As tempting as it is, I won’t let the Devil win.”
