Keith Urban didn't set out to record a yacht rock record. But then he entered the 'Flow State'

Keith Urban performs at Team MCA at the Ryman during Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, Tenn., on March 19, 2026. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File)

NEW YORK — He’s a country music star, but keen listeners know Keith Urban’s songwriting style is fluid across genres. Still, surely no one expected the shift of his 2026 album, “Flow State.” It features an original song with music legend, Michael McDonald, and 10 yacht rock covers.

The term is used as a catchall for soft rock released in the mid-to-late ‘70s and early ’80s. Think classics like Player’s “Baby Come Back” and Grover Washington Jr. and Bill Withers’ “Just the Two of Us.”

Even Urban is surprised by his pivot. Few saw it coming. “I didn’t either, no,” he laughed.

How Urban channeled the ‘Flow State’

It began with the recording. Urban purchased and restored the former Tracking Room studio in Nashville, renaming it The Sound. To break in the space, he hired a few session musicians. “I suggested that we do a yacht rock song just because I’ve always loved that loosely defined genre, and the songs are great and the arrangements are bulletproof,” he said.

Urban, producer Dann Huff and the band recorded two songs in one day. They were on fire, so a few more sessions were booked. And then a few more. “I thought, well, maybe this will be an EP, something that’s in between albums,” he said. It kept growing, eventually revealing itself to be a full-length release. “It really took on a life of its own.”

Urban says he and his crew were playing and recording purely for the joy of it. He says yacht rock is the “perfect genre for that spirit” — one defined by a kind of ease of presence.

But for his first album with covers, Urban wasn’t interested in corrupting the classics or attempting to perfectly replicate them. “Flow State” exists somewhere in the middle, with his sonic signatures intact. Extended outros were a natural place for experimentation. Take, for example, “Summer Breeze.” After recording the track, Urban and engineer Mark Dobson decided to extend the end with keyboard and acoustic guitar. “We assembled it after the fact, and it became this other piece,” he said. “Those moments kept presenting themselves, of where we could make it our own while still honouring the original.”

It’s prevalent throughout the album, including on the record’s collaborations: Little Big Town on Walter Egan’s “Magnet and Steel” and John Mayer on Bread’s “The Guitar Man.”

Urban and Michael McDonald team up for ‘We Go Back’

The sole original track on “Flow State” is “We Go Back,” a nostalgic tune about a couple who separate and meet up later in life. Urban wrote it with BRELAND, Sam Sumser and Sean Small in 2020. “I said to the guys, ‘Oh my God, if we’re going to write a yacht rock song, imagine Mike McDonald singing in the chorus,” he recalled.

Fast forward to 2026, when the yacht rock covers album materialized, and Urban’s manager suggested he work with Kenny Loggins or McDonald for it. They sent McDonald “We Go Back” and the rest is history.

“Luckily, he loved it,” he said. “But man, six years later to actually have him on this song when we just imagined him singing it all those years ago was just crazy. It was so surreal.”

Especially since Urban wasn’t thinking about writing originals for the album in the first place — the pieces simply fell into place.

A balm in a tumultuous time for the world and post-divorce

Urban describes the songs he chose to cover on “Flow State” as feeling as good to sing now as they did when they were initial release.

“The music was almost an antidote to the stresses of the times. And I think the reason it hits now is for the exact same reason it did back then, which is — there’s just so much divisiveness,” he explained. The songs give audiences in 2026 the opportunity to escape and to revel in the joyfulness of the music.

They are a balm for listeners and for Urban.

In January, actor Nicole Kidman and Urban were officially divorced after 19 years of marriage. The documents stated that the couple has undergone “marital difficulties and irreconcilable differences.”

Urban describes “Flow State” as “an unexpected group of songs and a very unexpected record to find me when it found me, because it was very much a 180 of what was going on at the time.”

“The record’s called ‘Flow State’ for a really good reason,” he continued. “It really was about just constant movement. And yeah, it was a challenging record to make at the same time, for something that kind of sounds so effortless. It was quite a juxtaposition at the time. But I’m really grateful for the way that the record turned out and obviously I’m very, very protective of my family and I’ve remained that way the whole time.”

As for “Flow State,” he says there’s real beauty in the idea that a yacht rock song can connect people to one another. “One theme, one feeling, one emotion that just lets us all exhale for a minute — and look up and see a blue sky — just for three minutes and 30 seconds, is so needed,” he said.

That, everyone can agree on.

Maria Sherman, The Associated Press