Blake Shelton and Kelly Clarkson have a relationship much like a brother and sister. Although they bicker as coaches on The Voice regularly, the two do love each other ...  we think. Clarkson poked fun at this while welcoming Shelton to perform on her show, the Kelly Clarkson Show, on Friday (April 8).

"Sure, my next guest has dissed me in public and stoked some serious bickering," she jokes. "But I know deep, deep... deep, deep, deep, deep down he adores me. Just gotta dig for it."

Shelton — not offering a rebuttal — took the stage after the introduction to perform his current single, "Come Back as a Country Boy." The country artist performed with a full band and backup singers in front of a huge screen that lit up more and more as the song progressed. What started as a few embers soon rose into a large fire burning bright.

It was very reminiscent of his music video for the song, except we didn't see Shelton emerge from the flames themselves.

"Come Back as a Country Boy" — written by Michael Hardy, Josh Thompson and Jordan Schmidt — comes from the deluxe edition of Shelton's Body Language album. Shelton is a country boy himself, and says the song is a way to pay tribute to the country folks in our nation.

“I think this song is an anthem for everyday hardworking country people out there,” Shelton said in a press release when he released the single. “We have so much pride in who we are and what we do that, if we ever died and got the chance to live life over again, we probably wouldn’t do it if we couldn’t be country.”

While Shelton has been a country boy his entire life, his wife Gwen Stefani and her boys have had to adjust to it. Kingston, 15, Zuma, 13, and Apollo, 7, split time between Los Angeles with their father Gavin Rossdale and Shelton's ranch in Tishomingo, Okla., and Shelton admits country life was a big adjustment for the boys.

“The two of them were like, ‘Well, what do we do now?’” Shelton shared at Country Radio Seminar 2022. “I go, ‘Go out that door and don’t come back till you’re too tired to go any further.’ Well, they can’t even imagine just going down to the creek with a net or turning over rocks or getting on a buggy and driving around.”

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