May 3 presented a very strange mix of events in the life of Keith Urban.

Capitol released his cheery single, "I'm In," to country radio stations. He planned to start recording a new album. And then the Cumberland River and a network of creeks began to overflow their banks.

It was, as Nashville residents have become fond of saying, a thousand-year flood, one that crippled portions of the city and swamped a few significant locations: the Grand Ole Opry House, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Kenny Chesney's home and the SoundCheck music storage facility downtown. Scads of instruments were destroyed at SoundCheck, including models owned by Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, Peter Frampton and Urban, who lost more than 50 expensive guitars. That obviously set back his plans to record.

For one day.

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Urban didn't sulk. He didn't pout and he didn't curse his luck. Instead he went out and bought a new instrument and showed up at the studio 24 hours later, ready to start cutting what would become the "Get Closer" album, set for release Nov. 16.

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"When I made my first record, I only owned one guitar, so I've made records with very little before," Urban says, shrugging off the dilemma. "I always embrace a challenge, and for me, it was just saying, 'We've got the songs, we're ready to go, we're gonna make this work.' "

"All he had was a bouzouki," producer Dann Huff recalls. "That's all he walked into this record with. What was beautiful is that it kind of reiterated to all of us who he is as a musician. The idea was, 'Hey, I don't have any instruments. Can I borrow this today? Can I play this?' That was the whole process, and it kind of reaffirmed the fact that it's not about studios, it's not about anything but the seed of an idea and the passion and the dedication to bring it out."

During the next five months, Urban fashioned "Get Closer" as an album about relationships -- ostensibly romantic pairings. But it involves other relationships as well: to his fans, to guitars, to his business partners and to the automobile.

Five of the eight songs on the standard edition of "Get Closer" incorporate some sort of vehicle into the proceedings. "Long Hot Summer" infuses dashboard imagery, "You Gonna Fly" has a driver racing through red lights, and the first single, "Put You in a Song," uses the in-car CD player -- or cassette deck, depending on which part of the lyrics you reference -- to re-create the excitement of a new love.

The car "is a great symbol of romantic freedom, and it's such a beautiful metaphor for so many things in life," Urban says at the Nashville offices of Borman Entertainment, the management company that represents him. "One of my great passions is driving. I put it right beside music as a real passion. I love driving anything, any vehicle. And probably love listening to music in the car as much as anywhere. [When] people talk about their island discs, I think about road-trip discs."

That behind-the-wheel motif comes to a head in "Right on Back to You," a ballad that finds the singer pulled over to the shoulder of the road in the midst of a storm, talking to himself in the rear-view mirror about his inability to make a commitment. The track builds dramatically with Urban weaving a series of conversational guitar lines that represent the opposing internal voice in an intense self-psychology session.

"A car is the place of realization for a lot of people," Urban says. "They get in the car when they get in trouble and [want] to get away for a little while. In this world right now, it's one of the last frontiers of absolute complete isolation, where you can really truly be on your own -- if you don't take your phone and you don't have OnStar. It's a place where I can get really honest with myself and a song can hit me and make me start to take a real look at certain things in my life. [Those] can be really profound moments. So some of my songs I write from that place, knowing that people will discover them in that exact environment."

AUTO-MATIC

Listening to the car radio is precisely how much of the public has discovered Urban since he split from his '90s country band the Ranch to forge a solo career in 1999. The automotive images have been there in the past -- in the Mustang references of "Sweet Thing" and the "hand out the window in the wind" line of "Days Go By" -- and those have helped enhance the listener's in-traffic experience of Urban.

"Because we spend so much time listening in our cars and we commute, we probably notice those things even more," country WDRM Huntsville, Ala., music director A.J. McCloud says.

Beginning with "But for the Grace of God," which topped Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart the week of Feb. 24, 2001, Urban has found his way to No. 1 10 times during the past decade with those commute-friendly singles. A big portion of those releases -- "Better Life," "Somebody Like You" and "You Look Good in My Shirt," for example -- are stamped with a shiny, glowing outlook, now a trademark of Urban's career.

"He makes our job easier," Clear Channel Milwaukee director of programming Kerry Wolfe says. "He's unique because he appeals to both males and females. The guys dig him for his ability to thrash a guitar like no other, and his live shows are electric. Lyrically, he somehow finds some pretty damn good songs every time."

NEXT: Keith Urban Writes About His Wife, Nicole Kidman