With Adam Levine rejoining The Voice coaches for the season currently airing on the 2025 TV schedule, many fans are upset that fellow OG Blake Shelton isn’t back to trade barbs with him. The cowboy may have turned his chair for the last time, but it would seem his mentoring days are far from over. Season 9 contestant Emily Ann Roberts opened up about just how much her former coach has done (and continues to do) for her career, and I am blown away.
Blake Shelton has famously continued to help the artists from The Voice long after the cameras stop rolling — as pointed out by Kelly Clarkson in his final season — and Emily Ann Roberts can certainly attest to that. The country singer was just 16 when she finished in second place to Jordan Smith in 2015, and she told US Weekly Shelton hit the ground running after the finale. She said:
Blake has been absolutely incredible from the get-go. I’ll never forget when I got off The Voice, he was calling me, saying, ‘So-and-so wants to meet with you, and I got this buddy that wants to work with you.’ He would call me out of the blue and make connections and check on me. He has just been such a great mentor.
That is amazing how much effort Blake Shelton puts into artists he sees potential in, and she’s not the only one. Several Team Blake alumni have said they kept in touch with the “God’s Country” singer and played at his bar Ole Red, including Season 21’s Lana Scott, who had a sweet run-in with Shelton.
For Emily Ann Roberts, meeting the country superstar really has been life-changing, and 10 years later she’s as close as ever to her former coach. In fact, last year Blake Shelton invited her to open for him, and she played on his Friends and Heroes Tour this year too. She said watching him interact with the audience and make everyone feel like part of the experience is one of the biggest things she’s learned from him. It’s been an “invaluable” lesson, she said:
[He] is giving me this opportunity to go out on the road with him and share my music with his fans. And that is something that you can’t even put a price tag on — the opportunity to stand in front of an audience that size and share your music with them is just invaluable. But also to be able to stand at front of house while he plays every single night and learn from him is better than any college or training you could ever have, because you’re learning from a pro who has done this for more years than I’ve probably been alive, almost, and done it so well.
That is an incredible experience that Blake Shelton has given Emily Ann Roberts, and she seems to know it.
Of course the former Voice coach can’t take every contestant he’s ever worked with on the road with him — though maybe that’s part of the inspiration behind his and Taylor Sheridan’s new singing competition — but he does still appear to support many of them. Whatever effort he puts into it, I think it’s really cool, because he’s certainly not required to stay in touch with any of the singers from the show.
Blake Shelton and his former team members may be off doing their thing, but The Voice continues on NBC with new hopefuls, so tune in at 8 p.m. ET Mondays on NBC and streaming the next day with a Peacock subscription.
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