Blake: Sounds Like Nashville
Blake Shelton lounges in the corner of his cozy dressing room at Ole Red in Nashville. He’s minutes away from announcing Las Vegas will be the fifth location for an Ole Red, his chain of entertainment complexes. “We Can Reach the Stars,” the song he wrote and played for Gwen Stefani on their wedding day, just came out, and the deluxe version of his album “Body Language” is less than one month away. “The Voice” is mid-season, his team is doing well, and he’s amused that a trio of police cars just swarmed a cart advertising marijuana sales across the street. It’s November, and after he performs on the CMA Awards later in the night, he’s heading home, where Thanksgiving planning is already underway. Stefani’s three stepsons want to make a bacon-wrapped turkey.
“It’s happening,” he says. “There’s no talking them out of it, based on the picture that they saw, which was the greatest picture you’ve ever seen.”
Twenty years after the affable Oklahoman shattered country music hearts with his five-week No. 1 debut “Austin,” his personal and professional lives look much different than he imagined.
He’s a five-time CMA Male Vocalist of the Year with 20 platinum singles, 28 No. 1 songs, and nearly 9 billion global streams. His career encompasses traditional-leaning ballads like “I Lived It” and “Goodbye Time,” rich collaborations with artists ranging from Garth Brooks to Stefani, the country/southern rock fusion “God’s Country” and cheeky sing-alongs “Some Beach” and “Boys ‘Round Here.” He personified contemporary country in 2011 with his multi-week chart-topper “Honey Bee.” His relationship with Stefani brought new compelling duets “Go Ahead and Break My Heart” and “Nobody But You” and a renewed focus on his faith when he released “Savior’s Shadow.”
“Body Language Deluxe,” which is out now, distills his strengths as a singer, storyteller, and good-time Charlie into 16 songs. His brazen happiness at home led to the most inspired album in his catalog. Shelton and Stefani’s chart-topping “Happy Anywhere” is built on the foundation of their previous hit duets. “Come Back as a Country Boy” is a redneck anthem that leans into “God’s Country.” “Bible Verses” is a vulnerable admission of his grind toward personal growth, and “We Can Reach the Stars” is a love letter to his wife.
“Some songs came in at a point in time when I wasn’t ready to make a new album,” Shelton said of why he rushed a deluxe version of “Body Language” to stores. His desire to share “We Can Reach the Stars” with fans ignited his sense of urgency.
“I want to declare this about (Gwen) to anybody that wants to hear it,” Shelton tells People. “Not releasing it didn’t feel right to me because the song is as important as me wearing this ring. I want to shout it from the mountaintops. I’m married to Gwen Stefani, and I wrote a damn song about it. Listen, if you don’t believe me.”
His reality as a multi-platinum country icon and television star married to pop royalty is a far cry from the 17-year-old Oklahoma hopeful with a questionable haircut who moved to Nashville in 1994. It took seven years of writing songs and working odd jobs for “Austin” to come out and change his life. But the considerable hit wasn’t enough to convince a pensive Shelton that his country music career was secure. “All Over Me” followed, and the song peaked at No. 18, fueling the singer’s worry. “Ol’ Red” was next and failed to crack the Top 10. Country radio didn’t embrace the song as it had “Austin,” but Shelton saw his audiences reacting to it. Attendance at his shows doubled, and he couldn’t believe it.
“‘Ol Red’ kind of changed everything,” Shelton says. “I kind of started to relax after that.”
“The Baby” – a heartbreaking ballad about a mother’s love – was his second No. 1 song and set up the next five years of hits and misses that included chart-toppers “Some Beach” and “Home” but also “Playboys Of The Southwestern World” (No. 24) and “When Somebody Knows You That Well” (No. 37).
“It kind of locked that for me,” he says. “A couple of hits and a flop. It was just the way it was.”
Some corporate shuffling at Shelton’s label Warner Music Nashville placed John Esposito at the helm in 2009. Esposito promised Shelton he would be the label’s priority when he arrived, and he meant it. Shelton’s impenetrable hit parade started hard and fast, with every non-holiday regular release going to No. 1 for the next seven years. Of Shelton’s 28 No. 1 songs, Esposito has been present for 23 of them.
“We’re at the beginning of a journey,” says Esposito, chairman, and CEO of Warner Music Nashville. “I know we have our 29th in our pocket. I hope he’s still talking to me about songs in 30 years.”
Many of the 16 songs on “Body Language” boast the timeless country feel of Shelton’s past hits, while others forge new musical paths for the man who values the song and its writers above all else. The album’s title track – a contemporary country/’80s pop mash co-written by The Swon Brothers, Matt McGinn and Ryan Beaver – is among those the singer feels stand alone in his catalog.
“I can’t imagine really hearing that on any album before,” says Shelton. “It’s the one that never gets skipped over.”
Shelton has known the Swons since they were part of his team on “The Voice” in 2013. “Body Language” is the first song written by Zach and Colton Swon recorded by a major label artist. After the pair left the show, he saw them struggle and celebrated their success when they signed a major label record deal. Shelton also stayed in touch with his fellow Oklahomans when the deal fell apart, and he’s watched like a proud older brother as the Swon Brothers fought to forge their path through country music.
“They’ve gotten better at singing, songwriting, playing and performing,” says Shelton, who also invited them to record the song with him. “They sent ‘Body Language,’ and it’s like, ‘Wait, hold up. Are y’all going to cut that? Because if you’re not, I’d love to have that song.'”
The news couldn’t have come at a better time for The Swons, who were having serious conversations about their future.
“So many things had to happen for this to end up as the title track of a Blake Shelton record,” Colton Swon told USA Today. “When you have Blake Shelton telling you, ‘You guys are good enough,’ it gives you a boost of energy big enough to keep going another 20 years.”
Shelton took his time crafting “Body Language” with his longtime producer Scott Hendricks. The business of music was uncertain, and he wanted to wait and see how albums were received before he devoted himself to making another. “Body Language” is Shelton’s first full-length studio album since “Texoma Shore” in 2017. The men collected songs for years, but when “God’s Country” fell in Shelton’s lap in 2019, he wasn’t ready for another full-length album. He couldn’t wait to release the song. Written by Hardy, Devin Dawson and Jordan Schmidt, “God’s Country” became one of his most significant hits. Five new tracks landed on Shelton’s 2019 greatest hits package “Fully Loaded: God’s Country,” but he saved most of the new songs he collected for “Body Language.”
In addition to The Swon Brothers, “Body Language Deluxe” also includes duets with Brooks & Dunn on “Throw It On Back” and Stefani on “Happy Anywhere,” Shelton’s 28th No. 1 song.
“When Blake asked me to be on ‘Happy Anywhere,’ I cried because I was so excited about it,” Stefani says. “The song is such our song, and we’re so in love. It was the perfect way to describe us and the perfect way to fit together. I feel like I’m in a dream right now.”
The feeling is mutual. Shelton’s adoration for Stefani is the foundation of “We Can Reach the Stars.” “The Voice” host Carson Daly officiated Shelton and Stefani’s wedding in July, and at his suggestion, the couple wrote their own vows. Stefani stunned Shelton with her endearing words about his brother and father, and he wrote “We Can Reach the Stars” for her. He told “People” writing a song is the last thing she would have expected him to do. When he got the idea for “We Can Reach the Stars,” Shelton climbed in his truck and called hit songwriter Craig Wiseman on his way to work at “The Voice.” As he explained the hook and that he wanted it to sound like ’90s country, Wiseman picked up his guitar and got to work.
“He was coming up with some of the most important stuff,” Shelton told “People.” “It was unbelievable for me to hear. He’s so good … and halfway through writing the song, I knew everything happened exactly how it was meant to happen. It’s just like, ‘Wow, we did it. I have a song about my wife.’ It’s so exciting to me.”
“Come back as a Country Boy” is Shelton’s current country radio single. Written by Hardy, Josh Thompson, and Jordan Schmidt, the song shares two of three writers and an edgy vibe with “God’s Country.” The video also allowed Shelton to live out his superhero ambitions when the clip showed him pushing over trees and rising from a fire.
“This particular song is a first cousin to ‘God’s Country,'” he says. “That’s what excites me about it the most. We were able to tap into something with ‘God’s Country’ that really fired up the country fanbase. It doesn’t have as much of a rock edge as ‘God’s Country’ did, but it’s got the same kind of personality. It’s an anthem.”
The most important aspect of his career remains the songs. In his work, Shelton acknowledges a lot of variety and says that while it may not always feel linear, the thread that ties everything together is that he thinks they’re all “great country songs.”
“I want people to hear the album and enjoy it,” Shelton says. “I want it to have sad songs that make them sad and happy songs that make them smile. That’s what I feel like my job is. I’m always looking for a way to push myself and for my records not to sound like the next one. That’s what I always admired about Conway Twitty. I always want people to feel like they got their money’s worth.”