Albums : Blake Shelton : Based On A True Story

Albums : Blake Shelton : Based On A True Story

Listen To Blake Shelton : Based On A True Story

Who is Blake Shelton?
Oklahoma native Blake Shelton moved to Nashville in 1994, two weeks after his high school graduation, to launch a songwriting career that would eventually make him one of the leading males in contemporary country music. Back home, he'd received statewide attention by touring the bar circuit and winning the Denbo Diamond Award, the top award for young Oklahoma entertainers. In Nashville, Shelton was able to maintain that momentum by selling songs to several publishing houses, including Naomi Martin Music, Warner/Chappell Music, and Jerry Crutchfield Music. He also landed a solo contract with Giant Records. Favoring a traditional style of country music that included sentimental ballads as well as blue-collar rock songs, he made a splash in 2001 with the chart-topping single "Austin," which spent five weeks at number one. "All Over Me" and "Ol' Red" followed in 2002, pushing Shelton's accompanying debut album — the self-titled Blake Shelton, released by Warner Bros. after the dissolution of Giant Records — to gold status.

With Shelton's songs still enjoying airtime on country radio, he returned to the studio to work on a second album. The Dreamer appeared in February 2003, hot on the heels of another number one single titled "The Baby." A third album, Blake Shelton's Barn & Grill, was released in 2004, along with an accompanying DVD featuring several of his music videos. Three years later, Shelton scored his fourth consecutive gold album with Pure BS, which featured a guest appearance by girlfriend (and fellow country singer) Miranda Lambert.

Lambert and Shelton attracted more and more media attention as their relationship progressed. Lambert made another appearance on his next album, 2008's Startin' Fires, and sang about their relationship on her own release, Revolution. Shelton eventually proposed in 2010, issuing a pair of well-received EPs — Hillbilly Bone and All About Tonight — that same year. The EPs yielded three number one hits, followed in 2011 by another chart-topper, "Honey Bee," which doubled as the lead single from his sixth album, Red River Blue. Shelton married Lambert that spring, several weeks after joining the judging panel of NBC's prime-time singing competition The Voice.

The Voice was a smash hit, elevating Shelton's profile and assisting the sales of Red River Blue. Two seasons of the competition arrived in 2012 and that year, Shelton also released Cheers It's Christmas, a seasonal album containing duets with Reba McEntire, Michael Bublé, Kelly Clarkson, and Lambert, as well as her band Pistol Annies.

Shelton delivered Based on a True Story... — his first full-fledged album recorded since the success of The Voice — in March of 2013, preceded by the single "Sure Be Cool If You Did" which topped the Billboard country charts.

Based On A True Story Review
Oklahoma country music superstar Blake Shelton handily serves multiple masters on his seventh studio album “Based on a True Story …”

As much as it might pain his longtime fans, especially Oklahomans who have followed the Ada native’s career since the 1990s, Shelton is no longer just a likeable country boy with a big voice and even bigger personality. Still, he continues to leverage those assets with affable ease, delivering songs that will appeal to both venerable devotees and newfound fans the Tishomingo resident has gained as a coach on the smash reality TV show “The Voice.”

Despite its rushed feel, Shelton, 36, manages to equalize his expanding sonic horizons and his enduring — although recently questioned — affection for old-school country music with “Based on a True Story …,” his first album since he truly broke out as a crossover superstar.

The follow-up to his 2011 Grammy-nominated effort “Red River Blue,” which debuted just after Season 1 of “The Voice,” “Based on a True Story …” also balances his gift as a balladeer with his reputation as a swaggering smart aleck.

The album’s chart-topping first single, “Sure Be Cool if You Did,” made it clear that the laidback country singer would be exploring a more pop-infused sound. The experimentation isn’t limited to the lead-off single: Shelton’s new “Story” opens with the freewheeling hip-hop beat of “Boys ‘Round Here,” which features his wife Miranda Lambert and her Pistol Annies bandmates contributing harmony vocals and sassy catcalls.

The three-time Country Music Association Male Vocalist of the Year clearly doesn’t need AutoTune, but the high-tech trickery is used for effect on the autobiographical Southern rocker “Small Town Big Time,” which expresses his homesickness for small-town living during his Hollywood residencies for “The Voice.”

The say-anything bravado that has earned Shelton so many admirers is given full rein on the brash “I Still Got a Finger,” which is sure to draw comparisons to David Allan Coe and Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It.” He also channels his Countrypolitan hero Conway Twitty on the seductive “Lay Low,” while “Granddaddy’s Gun,” previously covered by rock/country crossover artist Aaron Lewis, has all the hallmarks of a classic country story-song.

But the ballads are the best parts of Shelton’s “Story,” particularly the weeper “Mine Would Be You” and the sultry “My Eyes.” The newlywed bliss that flowed on “Red River Blue” seeps in with the good-natured “Doin’ What She Likes” and the earnest “Ten Times Crazier.”


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