The Palm Beach Post (Jan. 25th 2008)

Television experience opens Shelton’s eyes

Blake Shelton has thousands of country music fans, but when the tall tenor saw the opportunity to introduce his passion to millions, he couldn't pass it up.

Shelton joined Nick Lachey, Patti LaBelle and others to compete on a four-night competition called Clash of the Choirs. Each singer auditioned, selected, rehearsed and then performed with 20 singers from their home states, all for charity.

"If you are devoted to your music, and you want to get it out there, you have to do those things on the way," Shelton said. "The more I do to get my name and my face out there, the more people there are who are going to search out who I am and what I really do. I can't just sit here in Nashville every day and hope that the world hears my music. I've got to get out there. I do things along the way to bring more attention to it."

One unexpected lesson, Shelton says, was learning "how much more there is out there musically, besides country music.

"Being the choir director and seeing how passionate these people were about choir music and different types of music, it really opened my eyes. They were doing it because they loved it, having fun and giving it their all at the same time. They had to leave their jobs for weeks, and they weren't getting paid for it."

Shelton's choir came in third, but Shelton accomplished his goal of getting his face out there: "I certainly know that a lot more people know who I am. Traveling to New York City to be on the show, walking through the airports was a lot easier going than it was leaving to go back home. That's just the power of television. I was a little bit hesitant about it at first, and I thank God we decided to do it."

He appears at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the South Florida Fair's Taste of Florida stage.

Shelton's choir's winnings benefited an Oklahoma charity called Project Rebuild that Shelton has supported for years. "You always want to do something to give back to your community, and the entire state is my community. There will always be a disaster in Oklahoma, and there will also be people left out, and I just want to help build that up so we're pro-active instead of reactive.

"Oklahoma is a state of mind, and when you get away from it, you get away from that feeling. Nowhere else will ever really be home. Oklahomans just have those roots imbedded in them. For me, I can't stand to live in a city; I've got to be out in the middle of nowhere."

Busy career

Shelton's career is keeping him in the city a lot lately. Shelton followed up three gold albums with his May 1 release, Pure BS, and yes, the pun's intended. He's well-known for his sense of humor, which comes across in songs like 2004's Some Beach, but his voice also lends itself to heartbreakers like Austin (his first No. 1, in 2001) and tearjerkers like The Baby (his second No. 1, in 2003). You'll find both humor and heartache on the album.

"I probably get most of my seriousness out in my music, so all that's left in me is joking around," he explains.

He made the album while going through a divorce. "That was the music I needed to heal at that time. It ended up being what we put on the album, and I'm proud of that.

"I was dealing with a broken heart and having my world turned upside-down and drinking way too much, and I just put all that on the record and gave it to the fans to see what they thought about that period of my life."

Success in life, career

The fans liked it. As an album, Pure BS has performed even better than his first three albums, peaking at No. 2 so far. And his love life is going great, too: Shelton has been romantically linked to fellow country star Miranda Lambert since his divorce in 2006. He recently bet Lambert, whose second album was released the same day as his, that his album would sell better -- and he lost!

"I should've known what I was getting into. She's an artist that's out of the box. (Audiences) love her and what she stands for, and because of that, she sells a lot of records. I rub it in her face that I get played on the radio a lot more, but she sells more records. She's sold more than a million records on the strength of a song that went to No. 15."

The music business is certainly unpredictable, Shelton says, but he would like his legacy to be producing an album so good that every time you wear it out, you buy a new one.

"I still don't know that I've been able to do that, but that's my goal every time I step into the studio. I have a handful of albums left from some of my heroes, like Earl Thomas Conley's Somewhere Between Right and Wrong. I love that album. If I lose it, I'm back on the Internet looking for that album again. I want to have that effect on somebody out there with one of my records. That'll always be my goal."