Why Sting Had Doubts About Appearing on ‘The Voice’: ‘I was Reticent’

When Sting was first approached about being a mega mentor on this season of The Voice, he had his doubts.

“I was reticent, to be honest,” he says on the Universal Studios set of the NBC series. “The premise of the show is frightening to me, this sort of competition. I think art and music aren’t really competitions. If you win the U.S. Open, you are the best player at that particular time. But singing is different. Everybody’s voice is unique.”

It turns out he was very glad he said yes. Sting, who serves as a mega mentor for Gwen Stefani and Snoop Dogg’s teams during the Knockout rounds airing Monday (Nov. 11), found the experience to be a wonderful one.

The former schoolteacher found the contestants needed very little instruction. “I’m still a student of music, but I’ve been doing it for a long time, so I can give them a tiny hint,” he says, “but the standard of singing is so high, there’s nothing you can say. They know how to sing. There’s little bits of presentation or posture or the way that you present yourself I can probably help, but technically, they’re great singers.”

Still, the experience was rewarding. “It was very nourishing  to see a small piece advice that you’re given and then their next run through, they put that into action and the whole thing is raised,” he says.

As far as the best advice he ever got from a mentor came from his dad and he clearly took it to heart. “He said go to sea. See the world. Make something of yourself,” he says. “Basically, take a risk.”

Sting was already friends with Stefani and Snoop Dogg before the taping. He and Stefani first met when she was 13 and she approached him as a fan. They then met again when her group No Doubt and Sting (both as a solo act and as a member of The Police) were on A&M Records, including playing the Super Bowl halftime together in 2003.   

“I’ve been so impressed by how succinct she is in her comments about the artists, how compassionate she is and her wisdom,” he says of Stefani’s coaching technique. “She’s very clever lady, and, also, she’s not hard to look at!”

As far as his other coaching partner, Sting appears on Missionary,  Snoop Dogg’s first new solo album since 2022 out in December. Snoop and Dr. Dre, who produced the set, asked Sting to play on a song from his past.

“Dre and Snoop sent me a version of [the Police’s 1979 hit] ‘Message in a Bottle,’ and I was very impressed by it. Frankly, it was great,” he says. “It’s a  rebirth of the song, if you like. I played the guitar on it. I sang a verse, but in order to sing a verse that would match what they’d done, I had to raise my game, sing in a way that I don’t normally sing in a rhythmic way. It was challenging, but very, very satisfying. It’s a great version of the song.”

Reba McEntire, who is in her second year as a coach, started as a mentor, but Sting quickly denies advancing to that status is his endgame. (Jennifer Hudson serves as McEntire and fourth coach Michael Bublé’s mega mentor.) “I’m not a judge, I’m still a student,” he says. Plus, as he notes, “I have another job and that other job seems to be going very, very well.”  Indeed, the day after Sting appears on The Voice, his stripped-down Sting 3.0 tour will start a five-date run in Los Angeles.  The outing wraps in Sweden in July.