Blake Shelton: 'I wrote Gwen Stefani duet to impress her'

Blake Shelton wrote Go Ahead And Break My Heart to impress Gwen Stefani, and was shocked when she penned a better verse than him.

The Honey Bee star and Gwen struck up a romance last year (15) following his divorce from Miranda Lambert and her split from ex-husband Gavin Rossdale.

As part of their courtship, the country star wrote a song for his girlfriend and in May (16), Gavin and Gwen released the track, but the 40-year-old reveals he originally wanted to show off his romantic side by recording the tune for her.

"It's funny because I already started the song to just try to impress her because at that time we were getting to know each other and I said, 'I'll write her a song, that's what I'll do'," he told the Today show on Friday (05Aug16). "And then she writes the next verse and it's way better and it's like, 'Oh, OK, won't do that again!' (But it) worked out good for the album."

Gwen recently opened up about the songwriting experience, revealing she never expected to collaborate with Blake because she never worked with her ex, Gavin.

"We were both having trust issues, as you would if you were us," she told America's Cosmopolitan magazine. "It was like, 'I have so many problems. How can I now be getting into another potentially huge problem? What am I doing?'

"Blake wrote (song) Go Ahead and Break My Heart and sent it to me. He was like, 'Help me finish it'. I wrote a verse and sent it to him, but he was gone because he doesn't live in Los Angeles. He didn't have wifi, so he wasn't answering me back! As soon as he came back to town, he brought his guitar over. We were like, 'We wrote a song together! This is crazy!'"