Keith Urban shocked fans this week by changing the lyrics to a song about Nicole Kidman just days before the pair announced they were splitting after 19 years of marriage.
Kidman, 58, filed for divorce from her country music star husband on Sept. 30, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split.
But in a live performance on Sept. 26, four days before news of their separation went public, Urban, 57, turned heads by name-checking guitarist Maggie Baugh, 25, in his song “The Fighter” as she performed on stage with him in Minnesota.
Footage of the incident shows Urban changing the line “When they’re tryna get to you, baby I’ll be the fighter” to “When they’re tryna get to you, Maggie I’ll be your guitar player,” which was later shared by Baugh on Instagram alongside two shocked emojis.
“Did he really just say that?” she captioned the clip, seemingly as shocked as the rest of the crowd.
“The Fighter”, taken from Urban’s ninth album Ripcord in 2016, was inspired by the early days of his relationship with Kidman.
“It’s all from a conversation my wife and I had early on in our relationship, that when things get tough, I need to hold her tighter and just try to take care of her,” Urban explained in an interview with Billboard in 2017.
“The song is about wanting to heal somebody, wanting to take care of somebody, wanting to protect somebody. It’s really like a vow in so many ways.”
He added, “I want that tenderness to not have to get hardened to the world. That’s my job as her husband, to put myself around her so she can remain that way. And that’s really the chorus of The Fighter.”
Although the reasons for the couple’s split have not been made public, a source told People on Tuesday that Kidman feels “very betrayed” by her husband, and says the ordeal has “devastated her.”
“It really hasn’t been a secret in their circles that Keith and Nicole have been living separately for a while now,” the source added, revealing they had privately announced their separation earlier in the summer. ”People close to Keith felt like the split was kind of inevitable.”
Meanwhile, music industry sources have suggested that Urban has already moved on from his estranged wife and is seeing a younger woman involved in the music industry.
“The rumor is that he’s with a younger woman in the business. It’s all everyone is talking about,” a Nashville music industry source told the Daily Mail. “Everyone wants to know who, but so far, that’s a mystery.”
Multi-instrumentalist Baugh, 25, has been Urban’s ‘utility player’ on his current tour, joining him on stage and filling in several roles, including guitar, fiddle, and backup vocals.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Urban’s reps for further comment.
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