Keith Urban has gotten so good at what he does, that he accidentally cooked up the perfect summer soundtrack for you and your friends.
The GRAMMY-winning singer just released his Yacht Rock album, 'flow state,' setting the season off with an easy-going batch of beach-ready anthems, along with help from John Mayer, Little Big Town, and Michael McDonald. He joins Katie Neal this week during the 'Superstar Power Hour' to discuss how it all came together.
After purchasing a studio in Nashville in 2024 and getting it operational by 2025, Keith simply wanted to record something fun to break in the new space. “We put a band together and I said to Dan Huff, ‘let's just do a couple of Yacht Rock songs just to break in the studio,’ like there was no intention of releasing them at all,” Keith shares. “It was just fun.”
It was something that everybody in the band knew, we all know these songs, let's just have fun, let's not be getting too serious about everything,” he adds. “I would go away and tour and I'd come back and if I had time we would just put the band back together and maybe do one or two more songs and then I thought, well maybe I could release a little EP while I'm in between albums, you know, my original albums.”
“It really did take on a life of its own.”
The album features three collaborations from Little Big Town, John Mayer, and the one and only, Michael McDonald. “I'd actually recorded the album, we sequenced it, we mixed it, mastered it, turned it into the record label, it was done,” explains Urban. “My new manager said to me, ‘it'd be really great if we could get one of the Yacht Rock dudes to collab on something,’ and I said, ‘like who?’”
Keith already had a song in mind for McDonald, and got a session together to record with him in record time. “I'd met Michael, he'd recorded his vocal, we'd recorded the song top to bottom, we mixed it, we mastered it, we re-sequenced the record, we resurfaced it, we put it back on the label,” says Keith. “That's probably the shining example of how the album has consistently had a life of its own.”
For more from Keith Urban on the meaning of 'flow state,' and the debate surrounding the sound of Country music, check out the full conversation above.
