Maroon 5 frontman and “The Voice” mentor/judge Adam Levine has offered to pay for murdered singer Christina Grimmie’s funeral.
Levine himself made no announcement but Marcus Grimmie, brother of the former “Voice” finalist who was shot by a gunman in Orlando, Florida, on Friday and died that night at age 22, posted the news on Instagram late Monday. “I found out this morning that Adam Levine personally called my mother and said he will pay for the funeral and her plane flight, and I was blown away.”
Levine, 37, who served as her coach on season 6 of “The Voice” in 2014, has not commented. On Friday, before learning Grimmie had died, he posted an Instagram photo of the two of them, writing, “I’m sad, shocked and confused. We love you so much Grimmie. We are all praying hard that you can pull through this . . . this just isn’t fair.”
Shortly afterward, after hearing of her death, Levine wrote on Maroon 5’s Facebook page that he and his wife, Behati, “are absolutely devastated and heartbroken by Christina Grimmie’s tragic death. Our hearts go out to her family. Christina was a natural, a gifted talent that comes along so rarely. She was taken from us too soon. This is yet another senseless act of extreme violence. I am left stunned and confused how these things can conceivably continue to happen in our world.”
Levine had so admired and respected her talent that when Grimmie finished third behind season winner Josh Kaufman and runner-up Jake Worthington, he announced he would sign her to his music label, 222 Records. She ultimately chose to sign with Island Records, a division of Universal Music Group, but said in March 2015 that the label “then called it quits on me because there were so many big artists right now, they didn’t want to shelf me so they let me go do my thing.”
