Blake Shelton had the "best days of [his] life" when he had no money.
Blake Shelton
The 44-year-old singer - who made a reported $43.5 million last year - could "barely" make ends meet in the early days of his career and had to decide whether to prioritise paying his bills or having some fun, but though times were hard, he wouldn't change a thing.
He told CMT: "Those days when the big struggle was, 'Man, do I pay my rent or my electric bill, or do I just say screw it and go buy some beer?'
"You had to decide because you didn't have enough to go around. But those really were some of the best days of my life that I still think about all the time."
The 'Voice' coach - who is engaged to Gwen Stefani - can't understand why his single 'Minimum Wage' has experienced such a backlash.
He said: "It's literally a love song about how if times are tight and you ain't got much money—as long as you have love and you're happy—at the end of the day, that's all any of us can really hope for.
"You got it if you got that. That's all that matters.
"If that's offensive to you, then we'll just have to agree to disagree."
The song includes lines such as "Girl, your love can make a man feel rich on minimum wage" and Blake feels those who have criticised the track "clearly hadn't heard" it or they would have understood the emotions behind it.
He said: "I just feel like these days, there are people out there who don't want to know the truth. They just want to hear what they want to hear, and they want to pick a fight.
"No matter what your intention is, no matter what the truth is, they want it to be something that they can be upset about so that they can get on social media and try to grab a headline.
"With 'Minimum Wage,' at first I thought, 'Wow, I guess I just I've missed something here.' And the more I read into this, I realised this was really not real."
And he admitted the response made him wonder if he ought to "bow out" from the music world if such a typical country song is deemed offensive.
He insisted: "There won't be much left to play or write about on country radio if this is something that we have to think twice about. So I'm going to put out the records that resonate with me and my life and not look back."
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