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Why The Forthcoming Blake Shelton / Cee-Lo Track Could Be Awesome

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Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 01/30/2012 at 2:59 PM News

The Popdust Files: Blake Shelton, cee lo green, the voice

Never underestimate the power of a tie-in track from The Voice. That is to say, underestimate the winners’ tracks all you want–despite being decent-to-good, none have really cracked the charts much, although I did hear Javier Colon and TashBed’s song in a Whole Foods for some reason. But if the judges make music, underestimate it and it’ll be too late once you realize “Moves Like Jagger”‘s earworms have gotten to your brains, let alone the top of the charts. In other words, the Blake Shelton/Cee Lo Green track both judges have teased in Voice promo materials has the potential to be really big. Even more, though, it’s got the potential to be flat-out amazing. Why? Well, to start….

Country and hip-hop aren’t as opposite as you think they are.
“I like all music, except country and rap.” You’ve heard that, right? Of course you have; it’s Myspace Cliche #3. But they’ve got commonalities beyond 13-year-olds’ musical preferences. They’ve both got regional, and more specifically Southern, popularity. Yes, this creates some uncomfortable tension (Eric Church’s hit “Homeboy” is a one-track case study), but they’re not completely at odds–take Jason Aldean rapping it up with Ludacris on “Dirt Road Anthem” or the Southern hip-hop likes of Lil Wayne or Yelawolf and Big K.R.I.T., the latter of whom has a track called “Country Shit.” Blake and Cee-Lo are particularly well-suited to this, the former making some of the biggest of the big-tent country out there–he covered “Footloose,” a sure crowd-pleaser–and the latter being part of the group that invented the term “Dirty South.” It’ll undoubtedly veer more pop than either country or hip-hop per se, but that’s not a criticism, just a genre statement.

Cee-Lo has a habit of bettering his collaborators.
Call The Lady Killer Vegas retromania if you’d like, and nobody would dispute you, but let’s take a little Voice case study. Christina Aguilera and Adam Levine’s “Moves Like Jagger”: oh, you know. Christina Aguilera and Cee-Lo’s “Nasty“–awesome, easily as good as anything on Back to Basics. Or take any number of Vicci Martinez’s performances, which came off as gleefully, genuinely outre even after talent shows had thoroughly made it a cliche to make a song one’s own.

It’s the best of all remaining Voice pairings.
Christina/Blake would be superfluous after “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” which is essentially that. The magnitude of bro-ing out an Adam/Blake collaboration would produce would topple every frat court across the country. Cee-Lo/Adam could be promising, but Adam’s and Cee-Lo’s singing voices are too similar, and again, Cee-Lo basically did this already with Rivers Cuomo. But Cee-Lo/Blake! A gleeful tenor and a beefy baritone, meat-and-potatoes country music soaked in spangles–the possibilities are enough to swivel your chairs forever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGoiiwxTWeE