No Joke: Keith Urban Is Releasing a New Yacht Rock Album

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This is so perfect, you almost don’t even want to criticize it, though you know it will be absolutely terrible, even if the inadvertent entertainment value, and validation about Keith Urban’s true motivations and influences are so fulfilling. This move is so on brand for Keith Urban, it’s really a version of pure genius. It’s like drawing a perfect circle where illustrating the harmony of the universe makes you want to openly weep.

Ask yourself country music fans, why would you be consuming Charley Crockett’s new surprise album, or the myriad of other amazing audio selections at your fingertips, when you could listening to Keith Urban covering Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze”?

Country music’s most soft, most malleable, most commercially pandering star who’s constantly molding himself to whatever he believes his public wants from him has confirmed the rumors that yes, his next album will be his self-proclaimed tribute to yacht rock.

“You think I’m kidding? I’m not kidding,” Urban proudly asserts. “It features 10 covers of some of my all-time favorite yacht rock songs, along with incredible collaborations with John Mayer and Little Big Town, PLUS one original track, ‘We Go Back,’ with the legendary Michael McDonald.”

Called Flow State and arriving on June 12th, it will find Keith Urban delving into the era when folk rock flowed into soft rock that gave way to pastel hues set to music delicately groomed to immensely pacify.

Let’s not discount that due to the nostalgia factor, there isn’t a fandom for this type of music. It’s also fair to recognize that it was strong selections from folk rock and country folk artists like Jim Croce, Bread, and America that gave way to the worst excesses of the yacht rock era. It appears one of the songs from the new Urban album is Bread’s “Guitar Man.”

Keith Urban says, “The origins of this kind of music was, in certain ways, a reaction and an antidote to the stresses of the times. Its sole mission (and soul mission) is unchanged…to bring us together and remind us that life is happening NOW- the eternal now- and we have far more in common than not. I hope wherever you hear this album you can feel the exhale, comfort and optimism these songs were originally written by and for.”

And yet for some, they’d rather hear the soundtrack to their own colonoscopy procedure, and listening to yacht rock is apt to send them into a state of narcissistic rage. But again, hate on it all you want. At least Keith Urban is finally being his true authentic self as opposed to larping as a country artist. Post his split from Nicole Kidman, he’s been letting his freak flag fly, and apparently, that flag flies high on the mast of a luxury liner breeezily sailing off the beaches of south Florida.

Whether it’s good for a hate listen or you have a true affinity for the yacht rock era, Keith Urban is here to satisfy your dreamy, synth-laden, soft-toned desires.

TRACK LIST:

1. “Steal Away”
2. “Baby Come Back”
3. “Magnet and Steel” (feat. Little Big Town)
4. “Just the Two of Us”
5. “On and On”
6. “We Go Back” (feat. Michael McDonald)
7. “Help Is On Its Way”
8. “How Much I Feel”
9. “Summer Breeze”
10. “I Just Wanna Stop”
11. “Guitar Man” (feat. John Mayer)

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