Let’s take Adam Levine seriously!!!!!

The "Voice" judge and Maroon 5 singer would fail miserably on his show -- but has become a surprisingly sexy singer

Of the four judges or celebrity contestants or coaches — or whatever you call them — on “The Voice,” Adam Levine is the worst vocalist. Blake Shelton’s voice is sturdy and dependable like an old pickup truck. Christina Aguilera has strong, ostentatious pipes. And Cee Lo Green has proved his vocal chops on solo albums like “Cee Lo Green… Is the Soul Machine” and even the weirdly overlooked “The Lady Killer.”
But Levine, who also fronts Maroon 5 — so he represents “rock” on “The Voice,” which returns tonight on NBC — doesn’t possess a whole lot of physical or interpretive range. He tends to linger in the mid-range, although on slower songs he does try to hit higher notes, which only reveals his limitations. Lately, he has been favoring AutoTune, but to his credit, that’s more an interesting aesthetic device than a shortcut corrective measure.
That said — and Cee Lo’s freak charisma aside — Levine may actually be the best singer of the lot. He may sound like Al Green with an undiagnosed respiratory infection, but he does much more with much less. Sure, it’s ironic that he’s judging “The Voice” (which recently began its second season of not being a kingmaker like the faltering “American Idol”), since it’s doubtful he’d get very far on any of these shows as an actual contestant. Levine doesn’t have the chops that style of pop music demands, but that’s just one of the things that makes him and Maroon 5 interesting. That they’ve managed to become one of the biggest rock bands in the country is not unlikely. But somehow it is refreshing considering the alternatives: Chad Kroeger is back in the news and even Hoobastank has a new album out.
It certainly helps that Maroon 5 are just as interested in R&B as they are in rock ‘n’ roll, which makes his casting as the “rock” guy on “The Voice” seem like unimaginative typecasting. The band’s facility for melding pop hooks with R&B production certainly distinguishes them from other major-label acts, but perhaps more intriguingly, they treat both as avenues to and from sex. Levine — impossibly — manages to convey what might be described as a slinky sensuality that defies the concerns of the mainstream, the limitations of Maroon 5, and all logic everywhere.