Keith Urban didn’t set out to make a yacht rock album. He bought a studio—the old Tracking Room Studio in Nashville, which he renamed the Sound—and wanted to break it in with some covers of songs he loved. What happened next surprised even him: that studio test run became his next full album, Flow State, a collection of ten remakes of classic soft rock tunes from the’70s and one original track.
The genius of Flow State isn’t that Urban is slumming through someone else’s genre. It’s that producer Dann Huff helped him realize what had been hiding in plain sight all along. During their sessions, Huff told Urban something revealing:“I feel like I found one of the biggest missing pieces of how you make music.”The reason yacht rock felt so natural to Urban’s voice and approach? It was already woven into his songwriting DNA. The melodic sensibilities, the smooth vocal contours, the unhurried sophistication—Urban had been channeling elements of this world in tracks like“Kiss a Girl”for years without necessarily knowing it.
That organic fit explains why versions of Seals&Crofts’“Summer Breeze,”Player’s“Baby Come Back,”Stephen Bishop’s“On&On,”and Ambrosia’s“How Much I Feel”don’t feel like a country star cosplaying in another era. They fit him like a glove. Urban was thoughtful about song selection too, choosing pieces that matched his vocal range and letting bulletproof arrangements do the heavy lifting so he could focus on interpretation rather than starting from scratch.
The album drew some unexpected reactions. When Waddy Wachtel, who plays in Stevie Nicks’band, sent Stevie the record, she apparently took issue with not being asked to sing on the Little Big Town collaboration for“Magnet&Steel”—a moment Urban found hilarious rather than confrontational. Original artists like David Pack and Stephen Bishop reached out unprompted to praise the tracks. Even Michael McDonald appears on the original song“We Go Back,”which Urban wrote during the pandemic.
At its heart, Flow State captures something Urban articulates beautifully: the universal desire for a moment of exhale. In a world that demands constant motion and urgency, there’s something radical about choosing to sit in the zone—present yet lost, participant and observer at once—and letting smooth melodies and ocean breeze sensibilities wash over you. It turns out you don’t need an actual yacht to understand the appeal.
Urban already has ten songs picked out for a potential volume two, and Christopher Cross fans should probably start campaigning now.
About the Author
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
