Gwen Stefani Revealed Which Artist She’d Pick to Be Her Coach on ‘The Voice’
Gwen Stefani has spent years as a coach on the singing competition show The Voice. She’s worked with a number of other coaches and has a sense of who she would pick if she was competing. Given her personal life, her answer is not all that surprising.
Gwen Stefani said she would pick Blake Shelton to be her coach on ‘The Voice’
Before Stefani joined The Voice, she had never heard of Shelton. She said she quickly understood why he was a successful artist.
“I’m gonna be brutally honest. When I first came on The Voice [in 2014], I didn’t know that Blake even existed really in the world,” she said, per NBC. “But then I did my homework and I could see that he was an amazing songwriter, and then I could see everybody falling in love with him.”
Though Stefani is not a country artist, she said she would pick Shelton as her coach if she were to compete on the show.
“I would probably have picked Blake, because I just feel like he’s so good at the show,” she said.
She added that she felt drawn to him “like a magnet,” which would make her more likely to choose him.
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton met on ‘The Voice’
As Stefani noted, she and Shelton did not know each other before The Voice. They met on set, and they had a cordial but distant relationship before their respective divorces. Shelton separated from Miranda Lambert at the same time that Stefani separated from Gavin Rossdale. She had been keeping the end of her marriage a secret, and she felt stunned when Shelton announced his divorce on set.
“I was in shock, because I felt like he was exposing me. I just couldn’t even wrap my head around it,” Stefani told Howard Stern (via People). “I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on with me … I had this huge weight on me and nobody but my parents and obviously everybody involved knew.”
Shelton recalled that Stefani seemed emotional as she listened to his announcement. Afterward, she spoke to him privately.
“It was during that time, he came up to my chair … I never saw him look so upset,” she said. “So then I was like, ‘I gotta talk to you.'”
Stefani said that knowing another person who was going through the same thing as her felt like a gift.
“[It was] unbelievable that God would put us in a position to have each other at that moment, in the same exact moment,” she said.
Blake Shelton shared why she returned to the show
In this season of The Voice, Stefani is a judge and Shelton is not. In 2023, he stepped away after 23 seasons.
“I think I’d actually put out there to the press, too, because everybody wants to know, ‘Why are you quitting? Why are you walking away from the show?’” Shelton said on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. “And it’s like, ‘Well, for the family, for more family time.’”
He joked that Stefani was on the show for the money.
“And then the very next announcement was, ‘Gwen’s coming back!’ Maybe she doesn’t want too much family time, I don’t know,” Shelton said. “Money talks, OK? Money talks in this industry.”
