Sting was recently announced as a mega mentor for the Knockout Rounds of NBC’s The Voice, where he’ll advise Snoop Dogg and Gwen Stefani‘s teams. But he tells People he wasn’t sure about accepting the gig, since he’d never watched the show before.

“I’d never seen The Voice,” he tells People. “When I was given the premise of the show, I was a little bit anxious, but I know Gwen very well. I’m a big admirer of Snoop Dogg, and so I thought, I’m going to take a risk. I’m going to go on the show even though I’m a little trepidatious.”

But he says once he got into it, he found coaching the contestants to be “nourishing and joyful.”

He says, “I really feel good about the show. I feel good about myself, and I feel good about the young singers who are putting themselves through this ordeal. It is an ordeal, but I’ve loved it so far.”

Sting had a unique perspective, given that he was a teacher before he became a rock superstar.

“In teaching, there’s no such thing as teaching, actually. What happens in a classroom is learning and people learn through enthusiasm,” he says. “A teacher’s job is just to be enthusiastic, show appreciation, curiosity. And that’s your job here [on The Voice].”

Sting also welcomed the opportunity to work with Stefani. The two first met when she was a 13-year-old Police fan. In 2003 they played the Super Bowl halftime show together, and she inducted The Police into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that same year.

“I’m so impressed by her ability to communicate with the singers so succinctly and so intelligently, so compassionately,” he notes. As for Snoop, Sting worked with the rapper on his upcoming solo album, Missionary.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.