Adam Levine on VMAs: 'Of Course, I Was a Little Bit Jilted'

Wonderwall, Tuesday, August 30, 2011, 3:32pm (PDT)

By Rebecca Silverstein

• Adam Levine: musician, reality TV show coach... tea mixologist? You heard right. The Maroon 5 frontman and his band mates joined forces with Snapple to create a limited-edition flavor, Tea Will Be Loved, for the Best Stuff on Earth. Even better is that as part of the partnership, Snapple and Maroon 5 will donate $250,000 to hunger-relief organization Feeding America. But when he's not stirring up tea, Adam is mixing up controversy, this time with MTV. Read on for details!

  How did you get hooked up with Snapple for Tea Will Be Loved?

  They approached us to work together for the tour and the Feeding America thing came up, and we feel as though it's important to be thinking about how we can give back and help people, just because Maroon 5 has become so big at this point, we've become unselfish -- because it's what you do and it feels very natural. Snapple was great in organizing the whole thing.

  Each band member got to add his own favorite flavor to the tea. What was your contribution?

  It was actually really cool because we really were involved making the flavor. We got in there, we went into the flavor laboratory, put on our lab coats and actually mixed flavors. There were a bunch of good flavors, but I chose hibiscus.

  RELATED: See more photos of Adam

  On Saturday, you caused quite a stir when you tweeted "F--- You" about the VMAs. What made you come down on MTV?

  Listen, MTV is a very large international organization, and to be honest with you, internationally speaking, MTV plays videos, which of course I love. MTV exists outside of the United States in a very real way, as a station that plays videos and other programming as well, but they do play a lot of videos. MTV U.S. hasn't played a video on television in years in its entirety, and I just find it a little silly that they have the VMAs, considering they don't play videos and they don't support music really, and then one day a year, they decide to focus on music alone, and I have an issue with that.

  Were there any sorts of personal feelings involved?

  I was also upset that we've never really been included. Of course, I was a little bit jilted. At least at some certain point in our career, we should've been more involved, and obviously they responded with saying that we won a Moonman in 2004 -- which was 7 years ago, by the way -- which was great and we thank them for that. We also weren't invited to perform on the VMAs that year either. We weren't even there. So we basically didn't get invited the year we won either. So I was pissed, and I'm pissed off in general because I don't think that it's music television anymore, and I don't think they should pretend to be.

• RELATED: See the worst VMA outfits

  You're someone who's not afraid to speak his mind. Are you ever afraid something you say will come to bite you in the butt later?

  No, I'm not, because anything that I'm gonna say is something that I believe in. I'm not someone that's just going to run my mouth for no reason, with no purpose, inarticulately. Obviously, I have my moments when I say stupid things, but the things that I'm outspoken about are, in my opinion, things that I need to be outspoken about. I talk a lot about issues with gay marriage. No, it's human rights. These things should not be particularly controversial.

  Do you think more musicians hate MTV like you do?

  Giving the middle finger to MTV after years of being jilted by them shouldn't be front-page news. Everyone in the music industry thinks it and nobody says it, so I just thought it was time for someone to say something. People think it's because I was mad because we weren't nominated. I don't give a s---. That's clearly not it. I hope people don't think it was that petty. "Oh, they didn't nominate me, so I'm gonna say this." I was upset, and I was trying to represent music as a whole. Trust me, there's not one person in the music industry that doesn't agree. They just don't want to say it.

  RELATED VIDEO: Wonderwall hits the VMA black carpet

  Do you think people always understand you in interviews?

  People need to understand you can make a joke, and it's funny how people latch on to certain things and don't care about other things. Things that I'm saying are very tame, in my opinion.

  What do you think is the biggest misconception about you?

  I don't know how many misconceptions there are, because I think I've represented myself properly. Before "The Voice," there were some questions about what my personality was like because no one really had ever heard me speak, so I really loved the opportunity to be myself on that show. It's a really important thing to me, to be heard as a human being. So I don't know. Everyone has misconceptions of everybody. People like to speculate and formulate opinion based on certain things, and that's fine with me. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have issues with the things that I say, and that's totally cool. People have different opinions about different things.