Keith Urban‘s HIGH album will be out on September 20. The record includes“Go Home W U,” his duet with Lainey Wilson. Urban still recalls when Wilson first hit his radar, and quickly became an instant fan of her and her music.

“Maybe two years ago, somebody had played me a song that she had recorded, I think maybe even before she started working with Jay Joyce,” Urban tells Audacy’s US99. “It was just her voice, ‘Who is this?’ … There’s a thing, a je ne sais quoi, a certain quality that you can’t put your finger on.”

As soon as Urban heard Wilson’s voice, he immediately thought of someday blending their voices, although he didn’t immediately have a specific song in mind.

“It was just like, I heard her voice in a way that I thought, ‘I think our voices would go good together if we could find the right song,'” Urban remembers

Fortunately, Urban had the perfect song for their voices, and it was one that wasn’t written as a collaboration, although Urban now realizes it was meant for both of them to sing together.

“That song had sat around for four years,” the Grand Ole Opry member says. “We wrote it in 2020, me and Breland, actually. And so Breland was singing the chorus with me. We weren’t intending to do it as a duet the two of us. I was just going to do it and use maybe Breland’s voice as a backing vocal or something. And then a friend of mine, Dan McCarroll, said, ‘Actually, I think a girl could sing the second verse.’

“I looked at him and said, ‘Actually, I think it will work,'” he adds. “That’s a weird feeling when you then send the song to somebody, going, ‘Do you like this?’ It doesn’t matter who they are.”

“Go Home W U” is part of an album that was created from the album that wasn’t. The 56-year-old has been very open about his heartache over having to scrap almost an entire record, which he now sees as a blessing in disguise.

“I think realizing this wasn’t the album, I’m going to say that was the moment that was the most important, because it can only go up from there,” Urban says. “It’s like, ‘Okay, I know what it isn’t. That’ll help me figure out what it is.”

Urban has already released “Wildside,” “Messed Up As Me” and “Straight Line,” in addition to “go Home W U.”

See a track list for HIGH below. Pre-order/pre-save the project here. Urban will perform ten shows in Vegas this fall, as part of his HIGH residency. Find all of Urban’s music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.

HIGH Track List:

1. “BLUE SKY”
2. STRAIGHT LINE
3. MESSED UP AS ME
4. WILDSIDE
5. GO HOME W U (WITH LAINEY WILSON)
6. CHUCK TAYLORS
7. DAYTONA
8. LOVE IS HARD
9. HEART LIKE A HOMETOWN
10. LAUGHIN’ ALL THE WAY TO THE DRANK
11. DODGE IN A SILVERADO
12. BREAK THE CHAIN

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the CMA