In 2008, Blake Shelton had a No. 1 single with “Home”. The song is part of Shelton’s fourth studio album, Pure BS. But before Shelton brought the song to country radio, it was first a hit for Michael Bublé. It’s Bublé who wrote “Home” with Alan Chang and Amy Foster-Gillies. Bublé’s version of “Home” was released in 2005, becoming a massive hit for him.
“Home” may have started out as a pop song, but the sentiment of the song was very relatable to Shelton. At the time, Shelton was dating Miranda Lambert, and they were both spending a lot of time on the road. The song says, “Another aeroplane, another sunny place / I’m lucky, I know, but I wanna go home / Mm, I got to go home / Let me go home / I’m just too far from where you are / I wanna come home.”
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“Home” became Shelton’s first No. 1 single since “Some Beach”, which was released in 2004. Lambert sings on the track with Shelton. The two were married in 2011, divorcing four years later.
The Story Behind “Home”, a Hit for Michael Bublé and Blake Shelton
It was Bublé who had the idea for “Home”, although the writers initially weren’t sold on the idea. When the song was written, they were all in Europe, but longing to be home.
“When I first heard what he had to say, I felt it might be too much of a complaint,” Chang tells The Boot. “Especially since it was about being stuck in Europe, where we happened to be. I thought to myself, ‘Oh, great, complain about being stuck in Europe.’ But I thought, basically, it was a good idea. So I figured I’d just go with it, and try to come up with music that would fit that theme.”
Foster-Gilles knew the challenges of traveling, which is what she thought of when writing the lyrics to “Home”.
“I really wrote the lyrics about just the difficulties of being away from home,” she says. “I think it worked out really nice, and balanced between sort of longing to be home but still knowing there is a gratefulness about where he is.”
In 2012, both Shelton and Bublé sang on a holiday version of “Home”. The collaboration appears on Shelton’s Cheers, It’s Christmas record.
“I had the idea of doing a Christmas version of ‘Home’,” Shelton recalls. “Because the song would kind of lend itself to the holidays anyway. That’s when you really miss home.”
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