THE VOICE: Adam Levine, Shakira, Blake Shelton, and Usher Talk Season 4

THE VOICE returns to NBC tonight, but for the first time, the series will be sans original coaches CeeLo Green and Christina Aguilera. Thankfully, Shakira and Usher have joined the series to fill those big red chairs, but understandably, things are a bit different this season.

“It’s definitely changed,” THE VOICE coach Blake Shelton told reporters at a press conference late last year. “I mean, it’s two different personalities. You know what I mean? I would say the competitiveness is up somehow. You know, CeeLo was always just so laid back anyway. He’s kind of been the quiet killer in this thing. So we’ve replaced CeeLo with just somebody that’s just that much more aggressive. You know what I mean? And Christina was always competitive, and now you’ve got four that are just, you know, killers up here.”

And the new coaches are quickly getting into the groove of things, too.

“From my own experience from, you know, spending some time with these guys I can only tell you that it is the best and they joke all the time and make me laugh on stage, off stage,” Shakira said. “They have been such great hosts making us, Usher and me, feel at home at all times.”

“There’s a lot of competitiveness, of course,” she added. “We try not to make our lives…easy once we’re, you know, competing, battling over our contestants, and once we are in the process of trying to get a contestant recruited for our team, there’s a lot of adrenalin, and there’s a lot of tension, but a healthy one, the healthy kind on stage, but there is also a lot of, you know, good sense of humor in this whole recipe.  So it all works out, and it makes it super enjoyable.”

While the coaches haven’t shot any rounds beyond the initial blind auditions, the newbies do have a sense of how they’ll be at mentoring their teams.

“I think I’m super serious,” Usher said.  “I think my style is just like more military than anything because I’m all about the preparation and have always been extremely — like I rehearse a million times, you know, to be prepared…But my style is to make them understand the seriousness of the craft, you know, and that they have the very best opportunity to be the greatest or the worst, you know, depending on how you take it.”

“Besides being a singer I’m also a producer and writer,” Shakira noted. “I’m very much the whole, every aspect of my career.  Once I’m in the recording studio I am so hands on.  I tend to micro manage so much that I think I’ve seen myself lately, you know, while I’m coaching my team that I tend to do the same.  I focus on the detail.  I don’t know if it’s maybe because of the female condition, you know, but men are more focused on the general aspects, and women also tend to sort of focus on details a lot, and so when I’m giving directions to my contestants I’m particularly focused on details.”

As for original THE VOICE coach Adam Levine, he conceded that the new coaches do bring a few things to the table he can’t quite compete with.

“[Shakira] plays the female card quite a bit,” he noted. “That’s one thing we can’t compete with really, so she’s smart…Watch out for her.  She’s so sweet and she smiles, but she’s not that sweet…As much as I hate to say this about another coach in the beginning, but Usher has done what this show has yet to do. [He] launched a superstar [in Justin Bieber], and that’s our goal.  That’s the show’s goal so, you know, we can look up to you in that way. That’s something we want to do as an institution.”

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THE VOICE returns tonight at 8 PM on NBC.

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