Country Music Male Singers

NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Blake Shelton Gets Official Crossover Approval

(NASHVILLE SKYLINE is a column by CMT/ CMT .com Editorial Director Chet Flippo.)

I find it fascinating that country music remains an alien art form to many media outlets and their audiences. A very valid recent case in point is Blake Shelton . After a national audience for the TV show The Voice discovered what country audiences have known about Shelton for years, the media are trying to decipher and explain his appeal and how he became such a stealth crossover success.

In recent weeks, Shelton has done what no country artist has accomplished before: being lavishly covered and praised in the pages of both The New York Times and New York magazine at the same time. ( Taylor Swift has been well-covered in New York magazine and The New York Times and appeared on the cover of the New York Times Style Magazine .)

In recent years, the mainstream media's touchstone for how to comprehend and understand and explain the appeal of a country crossover artist has been Taylor Swift. And she accomplished her conquest by careful songwriting and sheer personal force, and she generated a tidal wave of sales and radio play and social media and concert mania. In the more recent past, the sheer crossover retail sales of the artists Shania Twain and Garth Brooks commanded headlines, but there were few credible attempts at deciphering the success.

By contrast with Garth's and Shania's commercial onslaughts, Shelton's achievements have been more gradual and more incremental. It culminated for him this week when his new album, Red River Blue , landed atop both Billboard 's 200 all-genre chart and country albums chart.

Shelton has been plugging away at it for more than a decade. He left Ada, Okla., after high school and headed for Nashville, where he landed a songwriting contract. He was "discovered" by the famed songwriter Bobby Braddock , who virtually adopted Blake and produced his early efforts. Blake's first single release was originally intended to be the Braddock song "I Wanna Talk About Me," but they eventually settled on "Austin." The song went to No. 1 and became a karaoke staple. Toby Keith later recorded "I Wanna Talk About Me," which also became a No. 1 hit. "Austin" turned into a career song for Blake. "I Wanna Talk About Me" would not have done the same thing for him.

Blake Shelton names the Top 10 voices in country music. Do you ...

Tonight on SiriusXM’s The Highway, channel 59, Blake Shelton—who’s currently atop the Billboard 200 album chart with the highest debut of his career—will host a special called “Blake Shelton’s Top Ten Voices in Country Music” at 6 p.m. ET.

You’ll have to wait till then to hear his countdown, but Sirius, which snapped this pic of him signing the autograph wall at its studio, did give us a sneak peek of his picks in alphabetical order :

I don’t think he’s into Garth Brooks or the gargantuan over the top arena concerts he put out in the ’90s.List of singers Blake is mainly late 70's and early 80's country. I think he chose the male singers that influenced the most as a singer and not someone as common as Brad Paisley, Toby Keith Kenny Chesney or. It is more focused on the voices of these singers, like the Spring Show, it was on NBC.

Well, that's the list so that you can not really complain. I am a bit surprised to George Strait and Keith Whitley are not on it but happy to see Travis Tritt. Also, Waylon Jennings should be there.I personally do not like Miranda Lambert, his voice comes off as faux-twang, not real. I do not like it. But you know that it took to put it or it would be in the kennel. I like Blake Shelton, he did a great cover of the house.

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