Luke Bryan, left, joked that he didn't want to talk to Blake Shelton, right, anymore.
(Reuters)
Luke Bryan is pretty over his friendship with Blake Shelton.
"I don't wanna talk about him anymore," Bryan joked with ET's Nancy O'Dell on the red carpet at the 2018 CMA Awards in Nashville on Monday. "I don't feel like I need to boost Blake's career with my time on TV."
In fact, the country star said his famous friend didn't even get his new number when he changed phones -- though that may have been by accident.
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"I've been texting him, we've been trying to work out some funny stuff... and I had changed my number, and he spent two months texting my old number," Bryan recalled. "So whoever's got my old number, it was Blake Shelton. If there were misspelled words, and bad vernacular and grammar problems, [it was] definitely Blake."
The pair's "funny stuff" may or may not include a musical collaboration -- Bryan said he's always open to working with artists from all genres. In fact, he told O'Dell that he recently missed out on writing with Ed Sheeran because he was in L.A. working on "American Idol" when Sheeran was in Nashville!
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So, could a duet with his "Idol" colleagues like Katy Perry and Lionel Richie be in the works?
"With any duet, I think the song always drives it, so if I ever find a song that feels like something Katy would want to be on, I'll present it to her, and we'll go from there," he noted. "Anything in my life's a possibility. Me and Katy have never talked about it, but, like I said, you never know. Me and Lionel have talked about it."
For now, Bryan was focused on opening the CMA Awards with his hit, "What Makes You Country." "They have entrusted me with the first performance of the night... [It's] all downhill from there," he teased.
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But he hasn't always been so chill about attending country's biggest awards shows. "You know, the CMA Awards was ground zero for my first full-on panic attack," he told O'Dell. "The first time I performed 'Country Girls Shake It For Me,' I was panic attack central. Can't breathe, you know, where it feels like your cheeks are locking up, your face is numb and I had to go out there and sing for my life."
"Now I'm just a seasoned vet," he added. "I get a little overly excited and amped-up, so I have to take me a nice little breath, and shoot me some whiskey backstage."
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