Keith Urban gave fans the first taste of his upcoming—and as of yet unannounced—10th studio album when he released his new single, “Female,” in November. While the empowering tune came together at the speed of sound—penned by Nicolle Galyon, Ross Copperman and Shane McAnally on Oct. 10 and recorded by Keith on Oct. 31—Keith normally likes to take his sweet time making new music.

“I got in the studio to start working on the new album in January of this year,” says Keith to Nash Country Daily. “Pretty much as soon as that Ripcord Tour finished, I was in the studio because it takes me the better part of a year-plus working in the studio to make a new album.”

Keith expects his 10th studio album to be ready at some point in 2018, but there’s no rush—he’s letting the songs steer him, just like he did with his critically acclaimed 2016 album, Ripcord.

“I’m working on [the songs] now, I’m writing, I’m recording. I’ve recorded a lot. I don’t know which ones are going to be on the album yet. The songs tend to tell me that. They did with Ripcord. I recorded maybe 25 songs for Ripcord and the ones that spoke to me were the ones that made the record. I have a particular vision in mind. I wish there was an audible version of ‘vision.’ People always say they can ‘visualize’ an album, I say I can ‘audio-lize’ it. I can hear it before it’s finished. So what I try to do is just bring it to life the way I already hear it in my head. But what I also do is stay extremely open to it moving into some other direction. It’s a real balancing act between, is it wandering off this cliff because it’s not being guided by me, or is that where it’s supposed to go in that direction. For me, the most valuable thing in making records is time—time to live with the decision, time to live with a song, and to keep feeling good about it before it goes out. Because once it goes out, that’s it. There’s no pulling it back after that.”