Keith Urban‘s next album, The Speed of Now Part 1, was announced in May, as much of the country was shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. Keith thought he was finished with his upcoming record when everyone was forced to retreat to their own homes, but found with so much time on his hands that he had much more he wanted to say.

“It was mostly done,” Keith told Variety. “Basically I was just finishing mixes, but then suddenly found that I’ve got a bit of extra unexpected time to keep writing. And I actually ended up writing several new songs, which pushed out some existing songs I had. I think it made the record a little more cohesive. In hindsight, I mean, the truth is, I was quite artistically paralyzed for the first part of lockdown. I unapologetically state that because I had been in the midst of not only playing gigs in Vegas and doing a bit of touring, but going down to studios here in Nashville and recording and having cameras and musicians floating around, and I’m engaged with people everywhere, and all of a sudden that stops. And I’m like, what the hell?

“There’s no touring,” he continued. “There’s no going to other studios. There’s no collaborating with people. And I didn’t know what to do, honestly. I wasn’t very excited to sit in front of my laptop with an acoustic guitar and keep playing a bunch of songs. That just didn’t interest me. After you do it once, you’re like, “Okay. There’s 4 million people doing this on YouTube every day. What are we doing here?” And I just didn’t want to do anything for a good few weeks.”

Fortunately, as the New Zealand native got acclimated to being home, he found his creativity start to come back.

“I slowly came down into my studio and recorded a couple of vocals with some guitar overdubs, and slowly got back on the horse,” Keith recounted. “And once I did, it was almost like a whole new drive to create came out of that. But it definitely didn’t start out that way.”

Keith credits one of his good friends with helping him get out of his creative paralysis, and find the positive in the challenging season.

“Sometimes you hear a piece of advice that sounds so stupid-simple,” Keith said. “You’re like, well, duh, but it hits you at a certain time. In my case, a really good friend of mine who I lean on for all kinds of advice in life, I was talking to him on the phone when I was going through that period. And I said, ‘I just feel stuck, honestly. I feel a bit paralyzed.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s because you’re only focused on everything you can’t do. You literally have listed everything on this call that you can’t do that. I haven’t heard one thing you can do.’ And I said, “Well, I can go down to my studio and do some vocals.” He goes, ‘When are you going to do that?’ ‘Well, I can do that tomorrow.’ And he goes, ‘Great. What else can you do?’ ‘Well, I could write with some people over Zoom.’ ‘Okay. When are you going to do that?’

“And all of a sudden, my whole focus went towards only: What can I do?” he added. “I stopped talking about the things I can’t do. And that simple piece of advice just changed everything. It really did; it was was extraordinary.”

Keith just released “Superman,” from The Speed of Now Part 1. The record will be released on September 18.