Jay Bobbin, Tribune Media Services

He won't be there, but it still could be one of Keith Urban's biggest nights. The country music superstar, who checked into a rehab facility last month for what his publicist termed treatment for alcohol abuse, is up for four honours in the Country Music Association's 40th annual CMA Awards. In addition to entertainer of the year, and male vocalist of the year, both of which he won last year, Urban is nominated for single (Better Life) and song (Tonight I Wanna Cry) of the year.

After last year's staging in New York, the ceremony will be back in Nashville, Tenn., as ABC broadcasts it Monday, November 6, from the Gaylord Entertainment Center. Brooks & Dunn, who join Brad Paisley in pacing the nominees with six bids each, will preside over the show for the third time. Along with Urban, Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood have four nominations each; Rascal Flatts and Dolly Parton have three each.

Scheduled performers include Brooks & Dunn, Paisley, Underwood, Chesney, Faith Hill, Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill, Rascal Flatts, Alan Jackson, Gretchen Wilson and George Strait, one of this year's inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Urban had been slated to perform on the show. His new album, Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing, is set to be released the next day, and he had planned to use his CMA Awards spot for the first single from it, Once in a Lifetime, which he co-wrote with John Shanks.

"I've got mixed feelings about putting music out for judging," Urban said in one of the last interviews he did before entering rehab. "It's always sort of nerve-racking. I kind of feel like I'm throwing my young child into a beauty pageant, and I'm not a stage mom."

Nominations

Deeming his current CMA nominations "gratifying", Urban added, "It's really hard to find the right words. It's not something I take for granted to be in these categories, and it still takes some sinking-in to see your name among the others. I don't know if you ever get used to that. Like most other artistes, you grow up watching the CMAs - which I did in Australia - and seeing Ronnie Milsap and Barbara Mandrell and Kenny Rogers, and suddenly, you find yourself there. It's a bit surreal."

Indeed, Urban said, "To win entertainer of the year last year was mind-blowing. I can't even quantify it. That award was so appreciated, it makes you want to get out there and justify it all." Urban also expressed appreciation for the lasting success of the album that fueled the honour, Be Here. "It allowed me time not only to tour as much as I could, but also to work on the new album."

When he's on the concert circuit, Urban likes placing new songs among the tunes his fans know and want. "You just feel your way through it," he reasoned. "It really depends on how long the (last) record has been out. You get feedback on the songs that are connecting with people, but a lot of it is just familiarity.

"When we were out on tour with Brooks & Dunn around '02, (Urban's album) Golden Road had just come out, and we were starting our show with Who Wouldn't Want to Be Me. There was no audience reaction to it, so if I'd gauged by that whether I should release it as a single, I never would have." <

Personal Life

With the plentiful attention paid to his personal life - given his recent marriage to Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman - the New Zealand-born, Australia-raised Urban maintained it hadn't affected his creative process. "I felt a little more free," he reported, "but I think that was more to do with a comfort level with the team in the studio. It was all the same guys I worked on the last two records with, so there was the feeling of being in a comfortable place to try new things.

"Obviously," Urban allowed, "a lot of these songs are relevant to where I am at the moment. My wife was wandering around the house, hearing these things being created from the ground up. I don't know that I necessarily played them to get an opinion. It didn't have a big impact on how the songs were written or completed."

When Urban met the press at last year's CMA Awards, his relationship with Kidman was more rumour than established fact, and he gracefully resisted questions about it. Even a few weeks ago, he preferred not to discuss it much.

"Your job is to still try to keep the focus on your music," he said, "but at the same time, the music has to be strong enough to be worthy of the focus. At the very least, you try to strike a balance between the two types of inquiries."

After their June wedding, Urban and Kidman managed to keep their relationship relatively low-key until last month's developments. "We're very private people," he said, "so the quandary I find myself in is that a lot of my personal life is in these new songs. On the one hand, I'm not comfortable talking about my private life; on the other hand, a lot of it is in the material, so I have to let the music speak for itself. It's quite a dichotomy for me."

Though he won't attend the ceremony, Keith Urban has four nominations in the 40th annual CMA Awards Monday night, at 8, on ABC.