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Season 18 of The Voice premiered in early February and marked one major change for the show: Gwen Stefani is no longer a coach, with Nick Jonas taking her place alongside Blake Shelton, Kelly Clarkson and John Legend.
Gwen Stefani is still in a relationship with Blake Shelton, but she left The Voice in order to devote her time to her residency at Planet Hollywood’s Zappos Theater. Her show, Just a Girl, was scheduled to run in both February and May 2020, which would have interfered with the filming of the singing competition show.
The departure is also a natural one for the show, which has said in the past that they rotate coaches in order to allow stars to continue and maintain their music careers.
Stefani Has a Residency in Vegas
Just a Girl’s residency in Las Vegas was announced on April 10, 2018 on Stefani’s website. She performed over 20 shows in 2019 and will be performing more throughout 2020. The setlist at the time included songs like “Hollaback Girl,” “Rich Girl,” and “Umbrella.”
The 50-year-old singer has been forced to cancel some of the 2020 shows, however, due to an illness. She offered refunds to everyone who couldn’t go and promised to be back for the remainder of her shows between February 14 and 22.
Shelton visited Stefani at one of her more recent shows, prompting her to thank him on Instagram, “@blakeshelton thank u for coming out and singing #nobodybutyou,” she wrote.
The couple has been dating since 2015 and were battling against one another on The Voice for a few of those years. Though they were not able to spend Valentine’s Day together in 2020, Shelton did send a huge bouquet of flowers to show his love to his long-time girlfriend.
She joined him on stage to perform their song “Nobody But You” during some of his tour dates as well.
Nick Jonas Took Her Place as a Coach
It was announced on October 7, 2019 that Nick Jonas would be replacing Stefani as a coach on The Voice. He is now the show’s youngest coach ever, but that didn’t deter the network from selecting him since he has such a full background in the entertainment industry.
Jonas announced the casting decision on both Instagram and Twitter, saying that though he hadn’t been on the show before, he was going to be coming for the other judges and he planned to win the season.
“I’m so excited to be a part of The Voice family,” Nick said in a statement after the announcement. “It’s such an awesome group of individuals, and I can’t wait to help these artists really build and hone in to find their unique voices.”
He’s already started doing that on the show, mentoring one young contestant during the blind audition episodes.
The other Jonas brothers, Kevin and Joe, will join Nick as his mentors later on in the season. They’ll help him choose which contestant to send to Knockout rounds and which contestants to pit against one another in the Battle rounds.
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