Happy Birthday, Blake Shelton! Shelton turned 49 years old on June 18. I’ve been writing about him half of his life—and more than half of mine.
Everyone’s 6’5” tall country-music-singing Oklahoman released his chart-topping debut single “Austin” in 2001. And while the song was a huge smash that 24 years later, he still can’t leave the stage without playing, he was known as much for his mullet as the heart-warming, love-gone-right ballad.
I met him for the first time during a video shoot at Springwater, a bar in Nashville, a couple of years later. He had an album called Barn & Grill and filled the bar with his farm animals. Shelton just loped around, amused as everyone else about the critters in the bar. His dogs trotted around like they owned the place. There was a horse trailer filled with goats, and I held his one-eyed chicken as he had to deliver romantic one-liners to another chicken sitting on the bar.
Twenty years later, I switched careers. I left journalism and went into artist management. It was a new management company; the pandemic hit, and for a variety of reasons, the job didn’t work out. My doctor doubled my Wellbutrin, and I spent two months couch-rotting, watching Netflix, clueless about my career or my next move. Shelton’s team called. They wanted a story in USA Today, and they wanted me to write it. I no longer worked for USA Today. But I called USAT and offered them the story. They took it.
Videos by American Songwriter
I Held Blake Shelton’s One-Eyed Chicken
We conducted a recorded Zoom interview, during which Shelton’s wife, Gwen Stefani, made a surprise appearance. The clips generated hundreds of thousands of views. I wrote the story, and thanks to Shelton, my byline was back in USA Today. Then People. Then Garth Brooks’ team pitched me a story for USA Today, and they took that, too.
Team Shelton got me off the couch and back to work at one of the lowest points in my life.
What happened in between was years of showing up when it counted.
I was Shelton’s first interview after his high-profile second divorce—Happy Birthday, Blake Shelton! He’s now 49 years old. This is what happens when you spend 25 years writing about country music’s favorite “funcle.”listening as he gushed about Stefani and honestly worried if the country music community would ever accept his new love. The story unfolded beautifully. I think the headline was something like, “Blake Shelton Finds Grace in God, Gwen Stefani.” Readers ate it up.
One year later, I went and hung out with him and Luke Bryan on the set of “The Voice.” Bryan was a mentor that year. I spent the day fairly convinced Shelton would get food poisoning. He loves calamari and walked by the catering table all day, popping the deep-fried tentacles into his mouth. How long does that stay good? Two days later, I met him backstage at the People’s Choice Awards for an interview about life in California and his time spent on “The Voice.” He wasn’t pleased with the freshwater fishing options, and he really wanted to win “The Voice.”
He wouldn’t go to his seat until Stefani arrived. When she did, she looked like an ethereal pop goddess in light blue.
Blake Shelton’s Dedication to Young Artists
Shelton teamed up with Ryman Hospitality to open a chain of bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues, which he named Ole Red. Nashville was the first location, and Shelton’s goal for the multi-story space was for it to have some of the best sound and one of the nicest stages in town. He remembers what it’s like to be an up-and-coming artist and have to play questionable spaces. He wants Ole Red to be a safe space for singers. After it opened, we met there for interviews most of the time.
One of my favorite memories was showing up to chat, and Stefani was there. Shelton and I were talking about something, and she was hanging out, sweetly chiming in occasionally. Shelton said, “You know, this is an interview? Cindy is interviewing me.” She was horrified. She said, “I thought she worked for us. Why am I even here?” Shelton said, “She’s safe, but this is still an interview.” Stefani left. (She might be one of the most well-known music stars of a generation, but in my experience, Stefani is as friendly and unassuming as it gets.)
Now, it’s common on Nashville’s Lower Broadway, but at the time, it was an anomaly. Shelton and I watched out the window as a cart claiming to sell marijuana set up across the street from Ole Red. We were certain it would be surrounded by the police and shut down at any moment. We never saw that happen, but the cart was gone when I left.
Shelton and I met up in Las Vegas when he debuted “God’s Country” at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Before he sang, he said hearing the song while looking at his Oklahoma farm was “the most shocking moment I’ve had in my 20 years of doing this.”
When “God’s Country” Stunned
“I was in a place physically that I consider to be God’s country doing the thing that makes me feel the most connected to God, which is working on the land,” he said. “It’s almost like a chance to stop and catch your breath and go, ‘We’re still all here. We still like this stuff, too, right?’”
It became his 26th No. 1 song. We knew “God’s Country” was headed for success because I prewrote the story, and we posted it online. As soon as his performance began, people started searching for the song on Google, and thousands began reading it. Thanks to technology, we could track it all.
Shelton and I met at Garth Brooks’ studio on Music Row a couple of months later—the day they recorded their collaboration “Dive Bar.” Shelton beat me there. He flew in from Oklahoma that morning, and I just drove in from Smyrna – about 30 minutes away. He was sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees when I walked in. Brooks (uncharacteristically) was held up at home. Affable as ever, Brooks showed up carrying his boots. He was in such a rush to meet Shelton that he didn’t take time to put them on.
We went into Brooks’ studio, which was cozy and decorated with Christmas lights. Shelton nailed his lines, and they finished the session before lunch.
I left my reporter job a few months later. The pandemic hit, and we hadn’t worked together for a year or so – until his team called and wanted the USA Today story. I’ll be forever thankful he got me off the couch.
And We’re Back
A couple of years later, he retired from “The Voice” and crashed on his couch. When Post Malone compelled him to start recording again with “Pour Me a Drink,” he started easing into work. We were back on the phone a few weeks later, and he was telling me about working with Post, his new tour, and a Las Vegas residency.
We were back – both of us.
In March, he met me at American Songwriter for an interview for our May cover to promote his new album For Recreational Use Only. I met him at the back door. He joked, “Do I really have to do this? Can’t you just write something?”
“We need the video,” I said.
(Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)
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