Keith Urban’s surprise career move
Keith Urban is one of the hottesy country music performers in the world right now, with dozens of awards including 14 CMA Awards, five ARIAS, four Grammys and four American Music Awards, just to name a few.
But his new album, Flow State, is an unexpected addition to his catalogue of work, with the 58-year-old covering some of the biggest yacht rock anthems in recent decades.
Keith Urban chats exclusively with Richard Wilkins about his new album. Today
Nine entertainment editor, Richard Wilkins, sat down for an exclusive chat about the new record, which Keith revealed was actually unplanned.
“The short version of the story is I bought a studio in Nashville and I spent about nine months getting it back up and running,” he told Dickie.
“And by the time it was ready to hit red and see if the equipment all worked - I was about to start the High Tour and I thought ‘I want to record something’, so we decided to just try a couple of yacht rock songs.”
But while it was just a way for Keith and his band to have a bit of fun with making sure all the equipment at the new studio worked - they realised the music they were making actually sounded pretty good.
“They were all sort of like ‘wow, this sound really suits you Keith,’” he said.
“So no one was really more surprised than me.”
Flow State features yacht rock bangers like Summer Breeze, Steal Away, Baby Come Back and Just The Two Of Us and while each has Keith remained faithful to the original recordings, he still puts his own unique stamp on the album.
“It’s always a challenge doing covers, because people are playing the original in their head when they listen to it,” he said.And to really put the yacht rock cherry on top, Keith invited pioneer of the genre, Michael McDonald, to collaborate for a new track - We Go Back.
“I can’t say enough about the fact this album continued to have a direction all its own and I was just following it,” he said.
Keith revealed he actually wrote We Go Back in 2020, with Michael McDonald in mind as the voice behind it.
“The album was finished and my new manager Jonathan Daniel listened to it and said ‘You know what would be great? If you could have a new song with Michael McDonald on it.’
“And we had 10 days to record the song, meet Michael, hope that he loved the song, have him record his vocals and mix it, master it, sequence it and redeliver it back to the record company.“The reaction to the new album has been terrific and while a tour promoting Flow State has not been confirmed, Keith said he has already been integrating the tracks from the record into his current live shows.
Flow State is available to purchase and download now and you can listen to Keith’s full exclusive interview with Dickie in the video above.
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