Walking through New York City on a shopping spree with his girlfriend Miranda Lambert, country star Blake Shelton [ tickets ] was feeling a bit homesick.

"I'm from Oklahoma and I still live there. I have never felt more out of place in my life than I do right now at this moment talking to you, standing out here on the street," Shelton said in a telephone interview with LiveDaily. "I'm about to walk into Macy's. This is real exciting, isn't it?"

Shelton was in New York City to promote his latest record, "Startin' Fires," which features a collaboration between him and Lambert. Besides shopping, he stopped by NBC's "Today Show" for a performance.

On the day that Shelton was named as one of People magazine's Sexiest Men Alive, Shelton talked to LiveDaily about the album, the success of his cover of Michael Buble's "Home," and his relationship with Lambert.

Congratulations on being named one of People magazine's Sexiest Men Alive.

Thank you. I still don't believe it. I won't believe it until I actually see the magazine.

I saw it this morning on People.com, if that counts.

Oh, that's cool. It must be true then.

How does that make you feel?

Oh, I don't know. I'm flattered. I don't even know what to think about it, really. My favorite thing about it, I guess, is knowing that my mom takes People magazine and she still cuts hair in Ada, OK. She's a hairstylist. My favorite thing about it is knowing she's probably going to cut that page out and tape it on to her mirror so she can point to it and tell everyone that's her son. So that's pretty cool, I guess.

So how did you come up with the title "Startin' Fires"?

There's a song on the album called "Good at Startin' Fires," and it's kind of the theme of this whole project--it's a rebirth of my career, especially following the success of "Home." It's kind of been a whirlwind since then. We were looking at the album, trying to think of the title and said, "You know, we feel like we are igniting this thing all over again. Let's call it "Startin' Fires," to go right along with the song on the record, because we feel really strong about that particular song also."

It is a strong song, as are several other tracks on the album.

Thanks. I appreciate you saying that. We feel like there's at least four or five on there, none of them would bother me as a single choice.

I read that you said this is more of an autobiographical album. Was it more difficult to write?

Not really. I've always been pretty much an open guy and making this one was a lot of fun for me. I feel like, at this point--this is my fifth record--people have finally caught on to my personality and my sense of humor. They come to expect certain things from me. It seemed like a natural time to just kind of sing a bunch of songs about my personality and the things I love to do when I'm back home, which are really simple things, like driving back roads, and hunting and fishing and drinking beer, things like that. The only thing that I've been a little bit nervous about is I'm kind of pushing the boundaries, as far as the production and the melodies. I think I'm singing a lot stronger than I ever have before. I really wanted to explore that a little bit more, especially after "Home" being such a big record and being a pop cover. We talked about it and decided, if I ever wanted to try out some things musically--which I always have--now's the time, because it seems like I've got the door open to try some new things with "Home" being such a success. I've always been pretty much a traditional country artist. I've got a lot of other influences too. I think if you listen to the record you can hear a lot of that coming through.

It sounds like your girlfriend also influenced you as well.

Yeah, she has to some degree, and to some degree, I purposely try not to take into account some of the things that she has offered. Sometimes I purposely go to her just to hear her opinion. It depends on the particular song. A lot of this new stuff we've been trying, such as "She Wouldn't Be Gone," I was really, really interested in her opinion on that song, and if she thought it sounded like a record people could connect with or relate to because it sounds like a younger-sounding record. On the other hand, songs like "Green" and "Country Strong," I didn't want anyone's opinion. Those are songs about me and who I am. I knew, without a doubt, that those songs belonged on the record.

How was it to collaborate on songwriting with Miranda?

Oh, it's awesome. I have a fire pit behind my house and whenever we're home, one of our favorite things to do is just go back there and start a fire, and bring our guitars and drink beer, and sing all night. One night, we went back there to do that and ended up writing this song "Bare Skin Rug" as a duet, and we were laughing the whole time we were writing it. We were getting a lot of pressure from people to do a duet. The last thing that she or I would want to do is the big cheesy love ballad duet that everyone would expect us to do. So we decided to do this goofy song that we wrote together sitting around a campfire. We decided to cut it that same way--just raw, with me playing acoustic guitar and she and I singing and with the fire in the background and crickets and everything else. I'm really proud of that. There's nothing like that that I've ever recorded that raw. It's something she and I had a lot of fun doing.

In a press release, you said, "She Wouldn't Be Gone" was the coolest song you've ever cut. Why is that?

Melodically, it goes so many different places and it's so unique. You can tell, from a songwriter's perspective, the song is written on piano. Most songs that come out of Nashville, I'd say 80 to 90 percent of them, are written on guitar, and when you write a song on piano, you can come up with really unique melodies. That's what happened with "She Wouldn't Be Gone." Also, the song is a song about regret and a guy with a broken heart, but it's got a lot of energy. I think the reason it has that is because, when he hits that chorus, even though the girl has left him and he knows she's gone, there's still a little bit of hope there, that if he can find her, he can fix everything, you know? That urgency and desperation comes out in the melody. It's kind of an up-tempo, power-rockin', broken-hearted song. I've never recorded anything quite like that before.

You said you're singing stronger than before. Is that something that's come about naturally?

Well, I've always focused on my singing and tried to get better. I've been touring consistently for close to 10 years now. There's two things that can happen: you can go out there and blow your voice out and lose it all together, or eventually, after working it that much, it's a muscle and you work it and it becomes stronger and stronger. I think that's what it is. I think I've matured as a vocalist and I'm proud of that. It's something that I've worked hard on.

How do you think "Startin' Fires" fits in with your catalog?

I think this is the turning point for me. I think it's the most important record I've made. It comes from such an honest place. For the first time, people in Nashville and the music industry, they feel like they have to stand up and take notice of what I do now. I think "Home" made people realize, "Damn it. I'm not going away." I think for the first time, I've got everybody's attention and they're real interested in what I'm doing all of a sudden. I think for that reason, it's important for us to find the best songs and make the best record we could. I'm confident that we did that.

Was it nerve wracking to do a cover of "Home" because it's such a recent song?

Absolutely. I didn't know, first of all, if it was too big of a hit and everybody was already kind of burned out on it. I didn't know if my fans, the more traditional country fans, would accept me doing something like that. As far as just recording it, that was the most natural thing I ever did. It's one of the only songs that I had a vision for and how we would go in and do it and it happened exactly that way. So the recording process was completely natural. After the fact is when I started getting nervous and having second thoughts about it.