USA Today (Sept. 28th 2014)

Blake Shelton brings back the country 'Sunshine'

Blake Shelton, as the late singer Dottie West might have said, was raised on country sunshine. And with his new album, Bringing Back the Sunshine, out Tuesday, the Oklahoma native feels as if he's getting back to his raising. 

"When life goes so fast, if you just pause for a minute and look back, you go, 'Man, I got very far away from what I used to sound like,' " says the singer and The Voice mentor, who initially hit the country charts around the start of the new millennium with story songs such as Austin, Ol' Red and The Baby. "You should do whatever you need to do as an artist to push yourself. For me, I want to sing all kinds of songs."

But "it's been 13 years since my first album came out," he says. "It just felt like time to throw back to that sound."

Neon Light, No. 12 on USA TODAY's country airplay chart, moves in that direction: It's the kind of barroom song that Shelton hasn't released as a single since 2007's The More I Drink. More obviously on Bringing Back the Sunshine, there's Good Country Song, which references Shelton's early musical heroes Earl Thomas Conley, Alabama and the late Freddy Fender. 

"As far as knowledge of country music history, he's a freak," says Warner Bros. executive Scott Hendricks, Shelton's primary producer for the past six years. "He really is. He's unbelievable. He'll say, 'I want that steel sound so-and-so played on this record back in 1982.' And you're going, 'I don't know that steel sound.' But he knows."

Shelton seems to delve into a little personal history on a song called Anyone Else, which he had to wrest away from his wife, singer Miranda Lambert, before he could record it. Lambert initially had the song on hold while she was recording her album Platinum, released in June.

"There were, like, three songs I tried to get: Smokin' and Drinkin', Anyone Else, then there might have been one more," says Shelton, who had considered recording Lambert's Grammy Award-winning 2010 hit The House That Built Me before letting her have it. "She was like, 'You're not getting Smokin' and Drinkin',' and I was like, 'I'm just saying I gave you The House That Built Me, and that did pretty well for you.'

"So I guilted her into Anyone Else."

Anyone Else comes across as an unusually vulnerable song for an entertainer who, as Hendricks says, typically favors songs that are "fun or sexy or stories." With lyrics like "I can't tell, are you being sincere?/ Did they treat you this way when you showed up here?" Anyone Else appears to be directed at another artist, or at least someone in the music industry. But this is one subject on which the normally quick-to-speak Shelton is staying close-lipped.

"Nobody will ever know who I'm singing about whenever I'm singing that song," he says.

Shelton will admit that, on occasion, he has been the guy he sings about in Anyone Else. However, he tries to give younger acts a helping hand, especially when it comes to his proteges on NBC's The Voice, which began its new season last week. Gwen Sebastian, from the show's second season, sings in Shelton's road band. RaeLynn, from the same season, appears on Bringing Back the Sunshine, singing with Shelton on Buzzin'.

He says he feels a responsibility to the singers that extends beyond the advice he gives them on The Voice. "When I have an opportunity to showcase one of them, I'm going to take it," Shelton says. "It sounds crazy, but they do seem like kids I've got to watch out for."