Tucson Citizen (Feb. 6th 2003)

Blake Shelton is taking a chance with his music

When Hank Williams Jr. sang about "Young Country," he wasn't exactly complimenting the new crop of artists, because their music shoved his aside. In Blake Shelton's hands, though, on "The Songs of Hank Williams Jr. (A Bocephus Celebration)" CD (due out Feb. 11), "Young Country" becomes an appeal to fellow artists.

"We are that generation, and it's our responsibility to show how we can handle that," says Shelton, who brought in other whippersnappers - Darryl Worley and Trick Pony - to record the song. "Our music is a reflection on country music, and it's a big responsibility."

This week, Shelton's sophomore album, "The Dreamer," proves his point. Its first single, the tearjerking "The Baby," already is a big hit, sitting at No. 2 on Billboard's country singles chart. And there are several other chart contenders.

"We went in with a handful of songs that we felt good about, and they just set the tone for the rest of the record," says Shelton, citing the rollicking "Playboys of the Southwestern World" as an example.

Thanks to the success of his hits "Austin" and "Ol' Red," Shelton and producer Bobby Braddock had good material to choose from.

"The difference in what Nashville brings you when you've had some success and when you haven't is the difference between light and dark," Shelton says. "I can't imagine what these songwriters go through when they have something they're really excited about and think it's going to be a big hit and then givin' it to somebody you've never heard of. It's a risk you take sometimes. But definitely, when you've had some success, it's a lot easier to get a top-drawer song.

"Just the other day, someone said to me, `I wrote this, and the first person I thought of to record it is you.' That's cool."

Shelton contributed two songs, including the title track, about the bittersweet fruits of stardom and how it affected his relationship with his girlfriend, to whom he recently became engaged: "I thought I needed fortune/I thought I needed fame/But all I needed is to hear you/Whisper my name."

"It's the first song that I sat down and wrote about myself and things that I've gone through being successful in this business," he says. "I feel like it's a chance for me to tell people who I am."

And what's a good ol' country album without a good ol' drinkin' song? Shelton's got a cover of Johnny PayCheck's "Georgia in a Jug."

"I was gonna record it for the first album, but I wasn't able to get it on there. We went back and forth with the record company on that one. But it was so country, and it was about drinkin', and those two elements alone made me want to record it."

Braddock brought "Some Day" to Shelton, who immediately connected with the song's soul-searching lyrics: "Before we were babies, there's nothing we recall/and when we go back will we fade to black and that's all?/Or could we be destined for some other time and place/And have we lived other lives our memories have erased? . . . Will we see Jesus coming as the sunshine fills the night/or when we die will we fly into the light?/Will we all be reunited with the ones who've gone away/and will we love each other the way we do today?"

"This song might offend some people, but some people are absolutely going to love it," Shelton says. "Playin' it safe is the scariest thing you can do, to me. If you try and calculate what radio is going to play or that this might offend someone or this is going to run some people off, then I think that things end up real vanilla. I don't want that to happen. I want to take chances with my music. "