Stefani joined the panel of coaches for the seventh season of "The Voice" in September 2014. She replaced Christina Aguilera and joined a panel that included Shelton, Adam Levine, and fellow newcomer Pharrell Williams. According to Shelton, however, he and Stefani weren't that close at first. "[I] never really got to know her, other than small talk," he told Billboard in 2016.
Still, it sounds like she made an impression. In October 2023, while celebrating Stefani's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Shelton recounted some of his first perceptions of her. "The first time that I ever met Gwen was in 2014. She wasn't like any other famous person that I had ever met before. She drove herself to work in a black minivan with car seats in it," he said. "She didn't roll in with security. She came in with a baby and two little boys, which at the time worked like security because nobody was going near — it was chaos . . . It was clear to me that she was a mother first and foremost over anything else in the world — that was her No. 1 job."
