Kelly Clarkson thought she knew all about Blake Shelton‘s pageant kid past when she brought up those days on a recent episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show — but, as it turns out, she didn’t quite know everything about her friend and fellow The Voice coach’s child performer past.
To Clarkson, Shelton admits that he and his sister once talked each other into taking breakdancing lessons, from an all-star teacher visiting their hometown of Ada, Okla.
“Breakdancing was huge, but not yet in Ada, Okla.,” Shelton explains to Clarkson. So, when he and his sister Endy saw a newspaper ad and some fliers around town advertising classes helmed by the woman who taught Michael Jackson how to dance, they went together after agreeing, “I’ll go if you’ll go.”
“So, we went. My sister may have taken more, [but] I just took one,” remembers Shelton, who confirms Clarkson’s question about his old nickname: “Break It Down Blake.”
“I just needed somebody to show me the way, Kelly,” the country star continues wryly, “and I could take it from there.”
Shelton’s mother, Dorothy, used to put her son in kids’ pageants so he could sing during their talent portions — “but,” he notes, “then you would also have to do the evening wear [portion] and …”
Shelton’s songs of choice, he shares, were Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” and Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever,” the latter of which “didn’t go over very well with the soccer moms in the audience,” he admits. (If you can’t figure out why, here’s the song — listen closely to the final verse.)
As Shelton talks, Clarkson can’t contain herself: “I gotta be honest with you: I knew you were gonna answer with this, and I just wanted to hear you talk about pageants,” she confesses with a cackle.
Both Shelton and Clarkson return as coaches for The Voice‘s 19th season, which premieres on Monday night (Oct. 19) at 8PM ET on NBC. Joining them in their spinning red chairs are John Legend and Gwen Stefani.
