Keith Urban has always marched to the beat of his own drum when it comes to creating country music.

Ambition and talent didn’t make him an immediate star when he first visited Nashville in 1989. Keith struggled through the early part of the 1990s in Music City, fronting bands 4 Wheel Drive and The Ranch. Success was eluding him, mainly because his style failed to fit in with the current Nashville trends. However, Keith stayed true to his music, eventually swinging the pendulum the other way by creating his own trends.

The rest, as they say, is history. The current CMA and ACM Entertainer of the Year and four-time Grammy Award winner has scored 24 No. 1 singles and sold more than 20 million albums around the world.

As Keith told Kix Brooks of American Country Countdown, maintaining his creative balance has been one of the keys to his success.

“[I create] by not being obsessively plugged in to begin with, you know?” says Keith. “Sort of staying a little bit on the—not the periphery of it, but just not all in, all the time, 24-seven. I think you just have to keep a balance in everything really, because it is a challenging time to create because there’s so many people ready to just yuck your yum [laughing]. And, you can’t let that stop you for lots of reasons. You’ve got to be able to express. You’ve got to be true, fully unfiltered true in your art, and what it is you want to say. But also it can be art that people really need. I’m talking about poetry or photography or movies or books or anything—the naysayers may very well be the people that need it the most, so it’s imperative to be allowed to write and create freely.”

Keith’s new single, “We Were,” is currently No. 18 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart after 10 weeks.