It’s been nearly a decade since RaeLynn first met Blake Shelton on The Voice.
At the time, she was fresh out of high school and just 17 years old, but she and Shelton immediately connected over the music, and they haven’t lost touch since. In fact, their friendship has only strengthened through the years.
“I knew that right when I met Blake, he was somebody that was going to be in my life forever and be a constant friend and a constant mentor. And of course now he is married to the most incredible woman ever, Gwen [Stefani]. She is so sweet,” Raelynn gushed.
She went on to open up about their friendship means to her and how Shelton has helped her navigate her career.
“I honestly think the bond that we have is just, he met me at a very young age, and he saw my ability to song-write, and I remember when I first showed him one of my songs. I showed him ‘Boyfriend,’ and he was like, ‘You wrote this?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and that was one of the first times that I met him, when I was on The Voice,” the Texas native recalled. “He was just so sweet, and I don’t know, every once in a while, you just meet somebody that you are like, ‘This person is going to be in my life for the rest of my life,’ and I just know that I am going to know that person. I knew that right when I met Blake, he was somebody that I knew he would be in my life forever and be a constant friend and a constant mentor.”
For that, Raelynn considers herself “lucky.”
“The connection that we built was just so authentic, and then he has been such a big advocate for me in Nashville.”
Recently, the pair teamed up for a duet on RaeLynn’s new album, Baytown.
“Me and Blake have been trying to find a song to do together since I have been on The Voice, and for the last 10 years, we have been like, ‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do?’ We could not do a love song. That would be weird, because he is like my freaking dad slash uncle, and so we were just always bouncing songs back and forth to each other,” RaeLynn shared in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
The perfect song finally came along when RaeLynn went into the studio with Corey Crowder and Tyler Hubbard.
“I am like, ‘Let’s write a song that is a straight duet for me and Blake,’ and so I had the title, ‘Why I Got a Truck,’ and we wrote this song, and right when I sent it to Blake, he was all into it, so it is probably one of my favorites,” the new mom shared.
Shelton’s reaction to the song was priceless, and he immediately agreed to lend his vocals to the track.
“I think he said, ‘Damn it Sis, this sounds great, I wanna do it,’” RaeLynn recalled.
Shelton joins her on “Why I Got A Truck,” which finds the country singers professing their love for pickups.
“That’s why I got a truck sittin’ in the driveway / Trackin’ that mud up and down the highway / I can haul ass, I can haul hay / I can fill ‘er up every time I get paid / The view’s just better up on 35s / Ain’t a dirt road ’round here it can’t ride / I can get you out if you get stuck / Tailgate down, make a little love / That’s why I got a truck,” the superstar duo sings on the chorus.
Baytown arrived on Friday (Sept. 24) via Round Here Records and is a continuation of her 2020 six-song EP of the same name. The project features eight new tracks, including her duet with Shelton and a collaboration with Mitchell Tenpenny called “Get That All The Time.”
