Keith Urban Revives ‘Miserable Year’ With ‘Beautiful’ NYE Show: ‘You Could See His Spirits Rise’

Keith Urban scored a much needed win with his CBS-backed, Nashville-based New Year’s Eve broadcast and a source exclusively tells Closer he’s eyeing up a lot more T.V. gigs in the upcoming year as he looks to re-establish himself in the country music community following a challenging 2024, to say the least. 

“If you had told Keith at the beginning of 2024 that his new album was going to bomb, but he was suddenly going to have a massive U.S. broadcast T.V. franchise dropped in his lap that could pay dividends for years, he would have fainted right in front of you,” the source says. “But the crazy thing is, that’s exactly what’s happened and the mood inside CBS, quite frankly, is that they should have recruited Keith for something like this years ago.” 

The four-time Grammy winner, 57, faced a disastrous album cycle with High, released in October, which debuted at a disappointing No. 38 on the Billboard 200. With country music currently forcefully ascendant in American culture, the bleak outlook for Keith’s album came as a startling shock to his team.

As Life & Style reported back in October, Keith was having a tough time dealing with the failure of his 12th album. “It’s become clear that Keith needs to shake things up if he wants to stay in the game and he and his team are not waiting until his next album cycle to do so,” a different source told the outlet.

Luckily, he was able to do just that. Even before the album dropped, the New Zealand-born singer was already tapped to host Nashville’s 2024 CBS New Year’s Eve special, which went way better than expected, considering the recent negativity. “He was classy, the music sounded beautiful, fans loved it and you could see Keith’s spirits rise in real time while the show was going on,” the first source says. “He could tell it was all working, and the burden of his disappointing last album cycle was melting away.” 

The five-hour show hosted over 40 performances, including Keith’s as host, that were delivered to a live audience of over 220,000. The country star took the stage and emceed the gig alongside Entertainment Tonight’s Rachel Smith to wide praise. Fans online decreed the show “magic” despite some technical issues at the beginning.

“This is a tradition worth keeping up,” the insider continues, “and CBS will continue to do this special as long as Keith is willing to.” 

“Of course, this does put Keith in direct competition with ABC’s famed Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcast now fronted by Keith’s old pal Ryan Seacrest, and also opposite CNN’s famously booze-fueled Anderson Cooper/Andy Cohen show, but Keith is such a nice guy and such a reasonable guy, he totally understands that these three NYE shows serve totally different audiences, and Keith is still country music royalty of the highest order.” 

“This could have been a disaster, but the country fans, and there are tens of millions of them in the U.S. and around the world, loved seeing Keith in this new way. He took a miserable year and ended it in high style!”