This song found its right home, but not with the first artist who recorded it.
Blake Shelton recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to discuss his new record, For Recreational Use Only, where he’s at in his career, and more. The interview got off to a hot start when Fallon and Shelton began poking fun at the name of his new LP and his Zoolander-like “blue steel” pose on the album artwork.
“You’re like thinking. You’re in front of the jukebox. There’s like a map behind you, and like a whip. You’re like Indiana Jones. And you’re deciding, ‘What song should I play next? What song should I play next? There’s a whole jukebox full of music back there, but I’m going to pick one…’”
Once Shelton became the subject of the jokes, he tried to get Fallon back on track, which led to Shelton talking about some moments early in his career. Shelton then shared that he was the first artist to record the Toby Keith hit “I Wanna Talk About Me.”
“So listen to this: my producer at the time was a guy named Bobby Braddock, and he wrote me this song because I used to have these stupid raps. I would come into the studio singing every day about, you know, doo-doo and things like that. You know. Fun things.”
During one of those days, Braddock quickly came up with the lyrics for the song that would later become the number-one single “I Wanna Talk About Me.” The same day Braddock penned the tune, Shetlon got in the recording booth and cut the single. While Shelton and his producer were fans of the song, thinking it was going to be his next big hit, those dreams were quickly shot down when his record label shared that they were not fans of the track.
Shelton recalled his label telling him:
“We don’t want any part of that song.”
While that song might not have been a hit for Shelton, Braddock knew that he had created something special and began pitching it to other artists, one of whom was Toby Keith, who agreed to record it.
“The first person he played it for was Toby Keith, which became one of Toby Keith’s biggest number one songs… But Toby ended up having a big hit on the song, and he always reminded me that it found its right home.”
Classic Toby to rub it in a little bit that “I Wanna Talk About Me” was a smash hit for him. One man’s loss is another man’s treasure, and that was 100% the case with Toby Keith. He was just lucky that Blake Shelton’s label passed on it.
Before you go, fire up the hit from the Big Dog Daddy.
