Blake Shelton

Blake Tollison Shelton was born in Ada, Oklahoma, to a beauty-salon owner and a car salesman. His uncle taught him guitar at twelve, and by fifteen he had written his first song; a year later he won a Denbo Diamond Award in his home state. In 1990 his older brother Richie died in a car accident, a loss that shadowed his teenage years.

After graduating high school at seventeen, Shelton moved to Nashville to pursue a singing career, taking a job at a music publishing company. Songwriter Bobby Braddock helped him secure a production contract with Sony Music in 1997. His actual debut single, 'Austin,' arrived on Giant Records in 2001 and spent five weeks at number one, kicking off his breakthrough in the early 2000s.

The platinum-certified debut album also produced the top-20 hits 'All Over Me' and 'Ol' Red.' His next two records, The Dreamer and Blake Shelton's Barn & Grill, went gold and platinum respectively, and a long string of number-one country singles followed. His material ranges from ballads to uptempo, humour-tinged songs, delivered in a warm baritone.

As of December 2020, Shelton had charted 41 singles, including 30 number ones, seventeen of them consecutive, a run that broke the record for the most consecutive number-one singles in the Country Airplay chart's twenty-four-year history. He has received nine Grammy Award nominations. In 2024 he left Warner Music Nashville and signed with BBR Music Group.

Beyond music, Shelton is widely known as a coach on the American television singing competition The Voice, a role he held from 2011 to 2023 that broadened his audience well beyond country radio; a member of his team won in nine of the show's twenty-three seasons. He is also a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and his recordings have generally stayed within mainstream Nashville production while drawing on traditional country phrasing.