Blake Shelton Admits His Biggest Hit Is ‘A Stupid Song’
Blake Shelton has had several country hits — and he doesn’t like all of them. For example, he said he thinks one of them is downright stupid. Oddly enough, this song was born out of an offhand observation about a popular rock band — as well as a very special and relatively inexpensive guitar.
How a poster inspired Blake Shelton’s biggest hit so far
Some country songs are about characters but others are about living a certain Southern/Midwestern lifestyle. The latter sort of song was quite prominent in the 2010s. According to CBS Minnesota, one of Shelton’s hits was inspired by an observation songwriter Dallas Davidson made about his lifestyle.
“I looked up at the [Beatles poster on the] wall and started thinking, man, ‘I like The Beatles, who doesn’t like The Beatles’,” Davidson said. “But honestly where I grew up, we didn’t ride around listening to The Beatles. We rode around listening to Hank [Williams] Jr., and Lionel Richie, but not The Beatles. That just didn’t fit in our lifestyle.”
Very quickly, Davidson wrote an opening verse for a song where he mentions how the men in his area don’t listen to The Beatles. “Then I went, ‘What?’ Because I spit the whole [opening] line out in one breath,” Davidson recalled. “And then [songwriter Craig Wiseman] goes, ‘That’s right!’ And then we were off to the races.”
The finished song, “Boys ‘Round Here,” is about living a “redneck” and “backwoods” life. It’s unclear why refusing to listen to The Beatles is part of that lifestyle. After all, Davidson said he listened to Lionel Richie, an artist who generally isn’t considered a backwoods redneck. While the song’s lyrics are notable, producer Scott Hendricks said it wouldn’t be quite the same without a certain guitar.
The guitar that makes ‘Boys ‘Round Here’ sound unique
“It’s a $200 guitar that sounds like no other guitar on the planet,” Hendricks said. ‘The guy who plays on our sessions has $80,000 guitars that sound incredible, but they don’t sound like this $200 guitar. So we built this track … around this acoustic guitar.” Hendricks thought Shelton would enjoy the song.
How Blake Shelton and the public reacted to ‘Boys ‘Round Here’
“I knew immediately this is something Blake is going to like, and sure enough he did,” Hendricks recalled. Or did he? In a 2016 Billboard interview, Shelton said his perspective on “Boys ‘Round Here” wasn’t exactly positive.
Shelton said “Boys ‘Round Here” is “a stupid song.” However, Shelton also said he likes acting stupid. Regardless of his thoughts on it, “Boys ‘Round Here” reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it his highest-charting hit so far. Shelton’s only other song to reach the top 15 was “Honey Bee,” which reached No. 13. “Boys ‘Round Here” did very well for a song inspired by an aversion to listening to The Beatles.
