"You Are” with Blake Shelton
“Blake Shelton and ‘You Are’ was the third song picked for the album. I was just getting my feet wet of how to record country style, which is the artist, the band, producers, everybody in the same room at the same time. And in walks this guy with more shirt than I’ve ever seen before in my life! A seven-foot-tall guy who claims he’s Blake Shelton and had the voice.
“I kept saying, ‘We do have a microphone. You don’t have to sing quite that hard!’ The joke with him is that he knew the song better than I did. I let him sing the song down by himself to get him comfortable with the song, not realizing he knew the song in great detail, to the point where I had a problem putting my voice on Blake Shelton’s song, ‘You Are.’ That’s our joke because it was truly an eye opener. I said to all these artists, ‘I want you to make this song your song; don’t worry about me. I can handle me. You just make sure you’re comfortable.’
“At the end of that song, he was comfortable and I was not until I got my vocal in there. But it was a fabulous, eye-opening experience because Blake has the voice of life. I love working with him. He’s fascinating.”
Blake Shelton: "Lionel comes walking in. He'd been there for a while, and it's just a different energy in the room 'cause he's just talking so much. He saw me, and he came over and introduced himself and thanked me 50 times for being there. I felt ridiculous with him thanking me."