Although it seems almost comical now, before releasing “God’s Country,” Blake Shelton thought his time was up in country music. The singer, who earned a Grammy Award nomination for the song, believed at least his best days were behind him, until one song changed everything.
“I just kind of felt like, ‘Well, that window closed. That time came and went,’ you know?” Shelton reflected to Gayle King on CBS News.
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Asked if he was having a type of pity party for himself, Shelton said it wasn’t that as much as him learning to accept what he thought his reality was becoming.
“I don’t think so. As strange as that sounds, it was just, ‘How do I fit in anymore?’” he said, adding. “I think I just feel like one of these days people are going to wake up and go, ‘That guy’s been doing this for 20 years. That’s enough.’”
Shelton might have continued down that path, if his producer, Scott Hendricks, hadn’t sent him “God’s Country,” which Shelton listened to while working on his Oklahoma ranch.
“I just completely lost myself in this moment, listening to this song,” Shelton remembered. “And the second time I played it, my heart started pounding, and what it did was made me go, ‘Dammit, I want to do this.’”
Not only did Shelton earn a Grammy nod for “God’s Country,” but he will get the chance to perform his current single, “Nobody But You,” with his girlfriend, Gwen Stefani, at the ceremony.
“I can already tell you that’s going to be one of the greatest rushes I’m ever going to experience, being on stage with Gwen Stefani at the Grammys, doing our song together,” Shelton said via ABC News. “The easiest thing in the world I’ve ever done is to sing any song with Gwen.”
“And, you know, look in her eyes and we just know what each other are thinking,” he added.
“Nobody But You,” from Shelton’s recent Fully Loaded: God’s Country album, could potentially earn him several more awards. The 43-year-old just dropped the video for “Nobody But You,” which already seems poised to be one of the biggest hits of his career.
The 2020 Grammy Awards will air live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, Jan. 26, at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
Photo Credit: Getty / Kevin Winter