Keith Urban was not in Nashville during the CMA Awards on Wednesday night, but the country star was able to share a performance from Australia, performing his recent single “God Whispered Your Name” on an empty stage. “Here we are,” Urban said as he strummed his guitar. “We made it to November 11th, 2020.”
“This song has taken on a few meanings this year,” he continued. “It’s a song about hope, it’s a song about finding the light, but above all it’s really a song about not having to go it alone.” Urban shared that he wanted to dedicate his performance to “all the healthcare workers, all the frontline workers and your families, for all the sacrifices that you have made and are still making for all of us. We say thank you.” The Grammy winner let his voice take center stage, softly accompanying himself on the guitar as he delivered the hopeful track.
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Urban’s dedication ahead of his performance was one of the few moments of the night that directly addressed the COVID-19 pandemic, save for a few jokes from hosts Reba McEntire and Darius Rucker.
Urban and wife Nicole Kidman are currently in Australia, where Kidman is filming a project, with their two daughters, Faith Margaret and Sunday Rose. The family has not been diagnosed with COVID-19, but Kidman recently told The Daily Telegraph that they have friends who have struggled amid the pandemic. “We’ve watched friends go to hell and back and have watched the world navigate this together, and I think we are all just going, ‘Is this really happening?’” the Oscar winner said.
“Keith and I have that conversation where we go, ‘I can’t even believe this has happened,’” she continued. Kidman added that she, Urban and their two daughters have stayed “healthy and safe.” “We just hunkered down and did what we were told,” she said.
Urban has been a vocal force this year, hosting a number of livestream shows for fans and releasing his new album, The Speed of Now Part 1.
“I certainly didn’t handle the locked down and the shutdown… well,” he told ABC Radio. “Creatively speaking, I got quite paralyzed with everything being stopped so quickly. Slowly, but surely I figured out that I could do a lot of stuff and work remotely. It was just strange when it became the only way to be making records.”
“2020 is just one long soundcheck,” he added. “It’s been somewhat frustrating for musicians to watch sporting events somehow figure it out, but us not being able to figure it out. That’s been very frustrating for me as a musician, but hopefully we’re moving in the right direction.”
