“I drug my big ass up here to Canada for 2 reasons – to play country music and drink”
With those words Blake Shelton took ownership of the Boots & Hearts 2014 main stage on Sunday night and had the tens of thousands of country music fans in the audience eating out of the palm of his hand for the rest of the night.
The crowd packed in, just like they did for Luke Bryan on Saturday night, and sang along with hit after hit from Shelton as he took songs from his newest album, Based On A True Story, and mixed them with the songs that have made him famous and popular on radio, TV, and tour.
The set started with All About Tonight, which fit the party theme of the entire Boots & Hearts 2014 weekend, and continued to roll with The More I Drink and She Wouldn’t Be Gone before he slowed things down a little.
Doing What She Likes and Mine Would Be You came back-to-back and you could see the couple dancing and swaying and singing to each other in the crowd. That same sweet, sexy feeling came back again when Blake dedicated Who Are You When I’m Not Looking to a young couple in the front and the video screens showed them dancing and singing along.
One of my favorite moments of the show came when Blake came to the front of the stage and sat down with his acoustic guitar and asked the audience if he could play 1 song alone – and with their blessing, sang his very first #1 hit, Austin… if you only know #TeamBlake from The Voice, you might not know that song, but if you’ve been listening to country radio since the early 2000s, you definitely know the words and were singing along.
The other most awesome moment came when Shelton urged the Boots & Hearts fans to hold up their cell phones and they did, en masse, lighting up the crowd while he sang his version of Michael Bublé’s Home and invited everyone to sing along while they lit up the night. Looking out over the 30,000+ fans and seeing all of those lights and hearing all of those voices was pretty surreal. I hope Blake thought so too.
There were also some loud, party, rowdy country music moments when Shelton played Hillbilly Bone, Boys ‘Round Here, and Footloose – it may have been Sunday night, but everyone was still in the mood to party in Bowmanville.
The show ended with God Gave Me You and a heartfelt bow and thank you to the crowd before Mr. Shelton exited the stage for good.
For almost 15 years Blake Shelton’s music has been on country radio and mixed CDs and iTunes playlists and YouTube and everywhere else that you find country music. I sang along with nearly every word of every song Sunday night, and when I think about it, I’m not surprised. There were half a dozen more songs that he could have brought out that I could have sung along to as well.
If you’re a Blake Shelton fan and you haven’t seen him live, you deserve the chance to do so. And if you have seen him, you know that it would be awesome to see him again. So keep an eye on his schedule – make a plan – and join #TeamBlake live when you can.
Thanks to Trish for all of the pictures from Blake’s set. Check out more of her photos from Boots & Hearts 2014 HERE!
Work Hard. Play Harder. Be Awesome.
