Blake Shelton has recorded a new version of Kenny Loggin’s 80s hit “Footloose” for the upcoming revamp of the movie.
Blake admits he wasn’t the producers’ original first choice to cut a new version of ‘Footloose.’
“[The producers] had envisioned a female cutting [‘Footloose’] this time around,” Blake explains. “So they threw out ideas for some other songs for me, but I finally just campaigned enough and whined about it enough that they said, ‘Why don’t you cut it, and just let them hear your version?’ So I cut it, gave it to them and they wanted to go with mine. I really lucked out.”
“It’s like a lot of stuff from that era — it was rock at the time, but is pretty much what we hear on country radio today. So I knew that we didn’t have to stray that far away from the original,” Blake tells The Boot. “When I open my mouth, what comes out is country. It was going to sound country no matter what, but I didn’t want it to be too different. There are two ways to bring back a song: one is to try to make it your own, and in this instance, you have to remove yourself from it and step into the role of what’s best for the movie and that particular scene. There’s really only one way to approach it when you think of it that way: a fun, uptempo, catchy version just like Kenny Loggins did.”
Listen to Blake Shelton’s ‘Footloose’