Adam Levine Describes Taking Over Frenemy Blake Shelton’s Chair on ‘The Voice’: ‘Doesn’t Smell Great’
Written by djfrosty on February 25, 2025
After a five-year break, Adam Levine is back on The Voice and it feels good. The singer said he’s “ready” and “rested” after stepping away from the show for a bit, telling Jennifer Hudson on Tuesday’s (Feb. 25) Jennifer Hudson Show that getting a chance to take a break and hang with wife Behati Prinsloo and the couple’s three young children has been good for him.
“Stepping back into it when I was really ready and comfortable it kind of felt like natural timing for everything,” said Levine, 45, who logged 16 seasons on The Voice before splitting in 2019. Levine was there in the show’s debut season in 2011, slipping into the iconic red chair next to Christina Aguilera, CeeLo Green and his best frenemy, Blake Shelton.
Hudson, who overlapped with Levine during seasons 13 and 15, asked if Levine has changed his strategy at all on he show, noting that he was “not easy to deal with” when she was going up against him. “I’m a pain in the butt,” Levine admitted, revealing that there was no official strategy when the first crew started the reality series that his team won three times.
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“So you just think to yourself, ‘Okay, I’ll just see how this goes,’” he said. More importantly, Hudson noted that Levine is now sitting in Shelton’s old chair after the nine-time champ country singer departed his long-time gig in May 2023 after 12 years.
“Doesn’t smell great,” Levine laughed. “Smells kind of off… weathered. Worn in, the seat’s a little more sunken in cuz he’s big… he’s a tall drink of water that guy. Nah, I think they washed it. It feels good.” He also described being on the “other side” of the stage this time, with John Legend book-ending the panel, a set-up the self-proclaimed “end-seat kind of guy” loves.
In the chat, Levine described taking his whole family on tour with Maroon 5 on the band’s recent run of shows in Asia, as well as being a “heated” basketball coach for his kids and the group’s upcoming “M5LV” Las Vegas residency at the Dolby Live at Park MGM theater in March.
And though he didn’t reveal many details, Levine also promised that M5 has some new music coming “soon,” and though he admitted he always says it, he’s “the most excited” about the upcoming LP, their follow-up to 2021’s Jordi. “We scaled it back a little bit and I did some writing on my own.. I kept it tighter,” he said of writing some of the songs by himself, saying they “harken back to the older stuff.”
Watch Levine on The Jennifer Hudson Show below.