Keith Urban is heading to The Voice! The Grand Ole Opry member will serve as a Mega Mentor for all of the coaches, including Reba McEntire, Dan + Shay, John Legend and Chance the Rapper.
This is not Urban’s first time on The Voice. He previously served as an advisor to Blake Shelton in Season 15. He also served as a coach on The Voice in Australia for Seasons 1, 10 and 11, and was a judge on American Idol for Seasons 13 to 15.
It’s a season of firsts for this season of The Voice. Not only will it be the first time Urban serves as a Mega Mentor, but it’s the first time The Voice has used a double chair, thanks to the addition of Dan + Shay to the lineup of coaches.
Urban currently has a Top 40 hit with “Messed Up As Me.” The song is from his forthcoming new album, one he made the painstaking decision to redo, when the first one he completed wasn’t the way he wanted it to sound.
“I hate saying this, but it’s so true: I left that meeting, went out, sat in my car, and I bawled my eyes out,” Urban admitted on Audacy’s Rob + Holly. “I did, I know that sounds pathetic to a lot of people, but after putting in that much work and knowing what was ahead of me workwise, which I didn’t want to do, it just gutted me. It was like being kicked in the stomach. And sure enough, it took a year. It took a year to finish out the record.
“And I’m so grateful for everybody giving me the time to do it, having the willingness to do it, and for the music saying to me, ‘Trust us. Just go with us. We’re gonna get you to a place where you’re going to be so much happier with everything, but you just gotta trust us,’” he added.
Urban also released “Straight Line” from his next, still-untitled project. The father of two wrote the song with Chase McGill, Jerry Flowers and Greg Wells,
“‘Straight Line’ was just one of those songs that, it happened from a feeling in the studio, playing, and that melody coming and the lyric coming,” Urban shared with Everything Nash during a recent virtual media event. “The song just sort of grew. It just grew really quickly. There are two songs that are on this album that came from two days of writing with three of my buddies that I love writing with, and ‘Straight Line’ was the second of the two songs we wrote.”
Urban will perform at both the CMT Music Awards in April, and CMA Fest in June. The Voice airs on Monday and Tuesday nights at 8:00 PM ET on NBC.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC/ Trae Patton