{"id":6116,"date":"2025-05-17T17:18:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T22:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6116"},"modified":"2025-06-20T17:40:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T22:40:05","slug":"blake-shelton-and-here-we-are-25-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6116","title":{"rendered":"Blake Shelton \u2014 And Here We Are, 25 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe Oklahoma native was arguably the most visible country musician of the 2010s, thanks to a record-breaking string of Billboard Country Airplay No. 1s and a 12-year stint as a coach on The Voice, during which he met his wife, Gwen Stefani. But as Blake Shelton tells Apple Music\u2019s Kelleigh Bannen, filming two seasons of The Voice per year left him feeling out of the loop as far as the Nashville scene. \u201cBy the time that those 12 years went by, all of a sudden it was like, man, I\u2019ve gotten old now,\u201d the 48-year-old singer admits. \u201cYou finally start looking at a chart, and you\u2019re like, who the hell is Morgan Wallen? Who\u2019s Luke Combs? It was like there was this whole new generation of artists who had taken over country music, and I was like, \u2018Oh, my God, I\u2019m one of the old guys now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly 25 years after breaking through with his 2001 debut single, \u201cAustin\u201d (and four years after his last full-length, 2021\u2019s Body Language), Shelton wondered whether there was still room for him on the country charts. \u201cIf I do put out a new record, are they going to play it? Are the fans waiting on it?\u201d he recounts thinking. \u201cThose are natural, normal things to think if you\u2019re being honest with yourself, and I try to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stream Now On Streamapse2.0<\/a><\/strong><\/span> Image Courtesy Of Apple Services<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On his 13th studio album, For Recreational Use Only, he puts those feelings into songs that sound like the Blake Shelton you know\u2014a sincere storyteller who prides himself on his performance\u2014but still swings for the fences here and there. Lead single \u201cTexas\u201d is a lost-love number that nods to George Strait\u2019s \u201cAll My Ex\u2019s Live in Texas\u201d and channels the minor-key melodrama of Ronnie Milsap\u2019s \u201cStranger in My House.\u201d And \u201cLet Him in Anyway,\u201d co-written by HARDY, allows Shelton to get existential, grappling with grief, God, and the afterlife.<\/p>\n

Looking back at his early career, Shelton remembers being elated and terrified at once, worried his success would disappear overnight. \u201cI loved it so much that I couldn\u2019t be comfortable that it wouldn\u2019t be gone someday,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was all I ever wanted to be: one of the guys that I was hearing on the radio. I didn\u2019t even know how to do it, and the fact that it was happening, it was like, I want to hang on to this forever. And here we are, 25 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Oklahoma native was arguably the most visible country musician of the 2010s, thanks to a record-breaking string of Billboard Country Airplay No. 1s and a 12-year stint as a coach on The Voice, during which he met his wife, Gwen Stefani. But as Blake Shelton tells Apple Music\u2019s Kelleigh Bannen, filming two seasons of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6117,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,96,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-featured-circle","category-streamapse-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6119,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions\/6119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}