Jelly Roll or Buc-ee's mascot? Who Keith Urban wants to sit with at the 2024 CMT Awards

Country superstar Keith Urban has performed at the most CMT Music Awards of all artists. This year he got the best seat buddy in the house.

Host Kelsea Ballerini had a little fun in her opening monologue. Cutting to footage of her at The Grammys when she lost to Lainey Wilson, she asked, “Did you see me?”

“Sometimes the camera just cuts to you and then people interpret your facial expression like they are reading your mind,” she told the crowd.

2024 CMT Awards:Winners and nominees from this year's show at Austin's Moody Center

She then said it would be fun to read the minds of some of the stars in the audience. She cut to Lainey Wilson, Carly Pearce and Tricia Yearwood, Keith Urban and her boyfriend, Chace Stokes.

“Who wouldn’t love to read their boyfriend’s mind?” she asked.

The camera cut to Stokes while a pre-recorded audio played of him saying “First she slides into my DMs, then she starts reading my mind...”

Another funny cut was to Keith Urban, whose audio said “I thought I was going to be seated next to Jelly Roll. I’m so mad,” as the camera panned out and revealed Urban was seated next to the mascot from Buc’ees. Urban’s audio then played “No I’m not, this is awesome,” as he hugged Buc’ee.

Keith Urban played the live debut of his song 'Straight Line'

Later in the evening, Urban hit the stage at the 2024 awards to perform his song "Straight Line" live for the very first time.

"It's the first time I've done it on any award show," Urban told the USA Today Network. He bulked up his band and added more percussion and backing vocals to "bring out other elements of the song" and lean into the dance rhythms.

Before he hit the stage, Urban said his goal for the performance was: "Energy and truth and raw and real and right in front of you."

The song is one of the two singles Urban has released off of his new album which will comes out this fall. The other single, "Messed Up As Me," released in February.

Urban worked on his new album for a year and a half. "I started another album before this one and then I bailed on that and moved towards this one," he said. He took four songs from the original record and wrote seven more songs to round out the new one.

"(The old songs) didn't belong with these four songs or vice versa. And it was almost like the songs said, 'We don't belong with these songs! If you take us with you, we will tell you what songs we live with,'" Urban said.

And now, Urban said the new album "flows just right."

And what keeps Urban coming back to the CMT Awards year after year?

"(The CMTs) are vibrant and supportive of new talent and supportive of great videos, obviously," Urban said. "God bless them."