Keith Urban hits stores with his new album, Fuse, this Friday, and it’s been a very creative process for him. The project started with Keith wanting to work with totally different people, mainly different producers and songwriters. In many cases, he pursued folks based on previous projects they worked on and which he really enjoyed. “I just wanted to start in a place that was being completely uncharted waters for me…I started seeking out guys who I liked what they did. In a lot of cases, I had never even met them before,” says Keith. “The whole journey started of trying to meet these people and get in the studio with them.”

The number of producers he worked with on Fuse increased exponentially during the process. While he did go into the studio with his longtime producer Dann Huff, he branched out of his comfort zone to work with a few different people, including Mike Elizondo (Eminem, Dr. Dre, Pink, Fiona Apple), Butch Walker (Fall Out Boy, Weezer), Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Little Big Town, The Wallflowers) , Nathan Chapman (Taylor Swift, The Band Perry) and Stargate (Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ne-Yo). “I think what I liked about working with different people is the fact that everybody makes records differently,” says Keith. “I didn’t set out for there to be eight different producers on all these different songs. I was sort of searching for synergy and compatibility between some people, and I found it in a lot of people on certain songs. That’s how this sort of record became what it was. I thought I would find one or two guys out of the exploration, and we would go and make the whole album. I loved how everybody had a different take on different things, and it pulled out something different in me too.”

He’s set to begin hitting the country music airwaves in Australia with his new single, “We Were Us,” a duet with Miranda Lambert on September 23.