Blake Shelton is a superstar in country music and Hollywood as a long-time coach on NBC’s The Voice. He ended his stint on the show in May with his 23rd Season. He even recently got a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

Blake and his famous wife, Gwen Stefani, often make headlines as the couple enjoy their life with Gwen’s three sons. This week, the couple took the boys to see an Angels game in Stefani’s native Anaheim, California.

I have been interviewing and sitting down with Blake Shelton since his first single, “Austin,” was released in 2001. We had many conversations over the years as Shelton strived to become the superstar he is today.

During one of our conversations in September of 2011, he had just wrapped the first Season of The Voice and was married to Miranda Lambert. In the interview, he told me about many things in his world at the time. As his star continued to rise in country music, he talked about his thoughts on fame and what Reba McEntire did for him early in his career.

I am sharing five fun quotes from the never-boring country star from that day at his office on Music Row (Reba’s Starstruck Building at the time), September 8, 2011.

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His Rising Fame

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Shelton said of fame hitting him ten years into his career as a country singer, “This is what I moved to town for. It is awesome, and it is mind-boggling to me that ten years into this, it’s happening. I can’t say that enough. I can’t believe that ten years into this, it’s now happening. And it makes it that much more gratifying to me because I can appreciate it. I’ve been through the struggles and the ups and downs and wondering if you’re ever gonna have a hit again. I know what this business is like.”
Blake's First Season On 'The Voice'

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Blake said after he committed to tour with Brad Paisley and then got the offer to be on The Voice, he was crazy busy. He told me he changed it up a bit when The Voice started to tape again: “With ‘The Voice’ starting again next month, I am not touring this fall. I think there are maybe four or five shows that were already on the books. I’m not going to do that to myself again, you know. There are things that I missed out on in Season One of ‘The Voice’ because I had to be gone. I don’t want to miss out on stuff and to get to know my team and get to know the other coaches more and spend more time with them. When you’re gone on your days off, you only have a working relationship with them, and that sucks.”
Lionel Richie

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Shelton talked about recording a song with Lionel Richie for Richie’s 2012 Tuskegee album: “Recording with Lionel Richie, man, that was a rush. Man, how old is that guy? I hate to assume anything, but he’s too old to have as much energy as he has. I walked into the studio that day, and, normally, when you walk into a studio in Nashville, everyone’s laid back and telling jokes we’ve all heard fifty times. But when I walked into the studio that day, people were standing up and smiling, and there was a lot of chatter going on. And Lionel comes walking in, and there’s just a different energy in the room. He saw me and introduced himself, and thanked me fifty times for being there. I felt ridiculous with him thanking me.”
Reba

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Blake told me what Reba McEntire did for him early in his Nashville career: “The ACM announcements/ nominees three years ago (2009), way before they were asking me, host, she agreed to go, and Reba doesn’t do this; she agreed to be on CBS’ Early Morning Show to announce the nominees for the ACMs if they would let me be on there with her. Normally they send a couple of new baby acts to go do that because nobody wants to wake up that early and go do that, but Reba did that for me. If there’s ever a time she can lend a hand, she’s always been that for me.”
Poking Fun

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Shelton said of his sense of humor and poking fun at many of his country music friends in the business: “It’s fun when you find somebody that you can talk trash to. I think fans love that. And if they take it seriously, they need to go listen to Jazz or something. Stop listening to country, because we don’t take ourselves that seriously. We have fun and say ridiculous stuff.”