BLAKE SHELTON LISTENED TO HIS DEAD BROTHER’S TAPES FOR ONE THING — THE VOICE UNDERNEATH THE SONG. After Richie died, the family gave Blake his brother’s music. Hank Williams Jr. Waylon Jennings. Rock records. Country records. The songs Richie had loved loud enough for a little brother across the hall to build a dream around. But Blake was not only listening to the music. He was listening for Richie. That is the kind of grief people do not talk about enough — the search for one more trace. One more laugh. One more sound hidden inside something ordinary. Richie was twenty-four when he died in a car crash on November 13, 1990. Blake was fourteen. He later said the world went silent. For years, he could not write about it. Then one night, after hearing his father say you never get over a loss like that, you just get used to it, Blake and Miranda Lambert wrote “Over You.” He could not record it himself. So Miranda carried the song his voice could not. It went to No.1. It won Song of the Year. But the real award was smaller than that. A family finally had a way to say Richie’s name in a room full of strangers — and feel understood.
Blake Shelton Listened to His Dead Brother’s Tapes for One Thing: The Voice Underneath the Song When someone dies young,…