Keith Urban tells Deco about finding his yacht rock groove in new album, ‘Flow State’

Some albums are planned down to the last note. Others just randomly find their groove and keep cruising. That’s exactly what happened with Keith Urban’s album, “Flow State.”

Keith Urban is setting sail on a surprising new sound.

His new album, “Flow State,” dives headfirst into the smooth waters of yacht rock.

Keith Urban: “So we put a band together, a great group of session players, and I suggested that we do a yacht rock song, just because I’ve always loved that loosely defined genre.”

What starts as a studio test run quickly finds its sea legs.

Keith Urban: “We recorded, I think, two songs on that day, and everybody kind of went, ‘Man, this feels really good, I wonder if we should do one or two more.’ It just kept growing and became an album. So it really took on a life of its own.”

Among the covers is one brand-new track called “We Go Back.” And from day one, Urban had one voice in mind for the chorus.

Keith Urban: “I said to the guys, ‘Oh my gosh, if we’re going to write a yacht rock song, imagine Michael McDonald singing the chorus’ and I kind of, I did an impression, which I won’t do now, but I did a bit of an impression of his vocal style and we really wrote the chorus melodically, channeling Mike, ...