Adam Levine (born March 18, 1979, Los Angeles, California, U.S) is an American musician, actor, and television personality who first gained fame as the lead singer and chief songwriter of Maroon 5 and later broadened his audience as a coach on the television singing competition The Voice (2011–19).
Levine grew up in Los Angeles; his father was the founder of a chain of boutique clothing stores, and his mother was an admissions counselor. In his teens, as a student at the private Brentwood School, Levine and some of his classmates formed a band called Kara’s Flowers. A producer from Reprise Records overheard Kara’s Flowers performing at a house party and signed the ensemble. In 1997, the year that Levine graduated from high school, he and his bandmates appeared on an episode of the popular TV series Beverly Hills 90210 and released an alternative-rock album, Fourth World. The LP failed to sell, however, and the record label dropped the band, which then broke up. Levine moved east to attend Five Towns College in Long Island, New York. While there he became familiar with rhythm-and-blues, soul, and hip-hop music—a new exposure that changed the way he thought about popular music.
Levine, inspired to try a fresh musical direction, returned (2000) to Los Angeles and reconvened the band. The group began playing in local clubs and soon signed with Octone Records. Renamed Maroon 5, the musicians in 2002 released an album, Songs About Jane, that showcased its new funky sound. The LP was not an immediate hit, but the single “Harder to Breathe” slowly increased in radio play and achieved popularity about a year and a half after its initial release. Another song from the album, “This Love,” supported by a somewhat salacious video, was issued in 2004 and quickly struck gold, and Songs About Jane finally entered the Billboard Top Ten in August of that year. Maroon 5 won the 2004 Grammy Award for best new artist, and “This Love” took the 2005 Grammy for best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals. The band toured relentlessly, with crowds flocking to hear Maroon 5’s reliably tight renditions of its well-crafted pop songs and Levine’s smooth tenor and soaring falsetto vocals. The group also issued the live recordings 1.22.03 Acoustic (2004) and Live: Friday the 13th (2005) before making its next studio album, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long (2007). A single from that recording, “Makes Me Wonder,” won a 2007 Grammy for best pop performance.
Maroon 5 continued to tour and to release top-ten albums—Hands All Over (2010), Overexposed (2012), V (2014), Red Pill Blues (2017), and Jordi (2021)—and singles (notably 2010’s “Moves like Jagger,” featuring Christina Aguilera). In addition, the band headlined the Super Bowl halftime show in 2019; their appearance generated some backlash, as other singers had reportedly rejected offers to perform at the event in a show of support for Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL player who allegedly was banned from the league because of his protests against police brutality. During this time Levine was tapped as a coach for the inaugural season (2011) of The Voice; he left after the 16th season in 2019. In addition, in 2012 he appeared in a recurring role on the anthology TV series American Horror Story, and he had a major part in a 2013 film, Begin Again.