It’s not every day that you record an album and have it completed, only to return to the drawing board and rework the project. But that’s what happened to Keith Urban when he put together the follow-up to THE SPEED OF NOW: Part 1.

“I’d actually started an album that became this record, and I worked on that for the better part of a year, only to come to the realization when I wrote it in and presented [all these songs] that I went, ‘This isn’t it,'” Keith shares in a recent press interview.

“It was in February last year, and I brought the whole album in, finished, and I could feel as I was playing it that it wasn’t the album,” he says. “‘Messed Up as Me’ was part of that album, so there were certain songs that wanted to be a part of a different record.”

This unorthodox process of creating an album is a first for Keith. Instead of lamenting the extra work required, he trusted his gut and ensured each song fit the project well.

“The vision I had for the album, it was almost like some of the songs started to tell me that there’s another record. ‘We’re part of that record to take us with you. Get back in the studio, get back to writing and finish the album that we’re a part of. We’re not on this record,'” he explains, adding, “‘Messed Up as Me’ is one of those songs.”

“‘Straight Line,‘ the first song off this record, was one of the new ones,” he adds. “This never actually happened to me before, where literally, like, the songs told me where they wanted to go and what kind of album they wanted to be a part of.”

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