Adam Levine defends accepting Super Bowl halftime performance

Adam Levine is assuring critics of his upcoming halftime show that their voices “will be” heard during Maroon 5’s performance on Super Bowl Sunday.

“I’m not in the right profession if I can’t handle a little bit of controversy. It’s what it is,” the Maroon 5 frontman told “Entertainment Tonight’s” Kevin Frazier in a Thursday interview. “We expected it. We’d like to move on from it, and like I said earlier, speak through the music.”

{mosads}Questions were raised over which entertainers would accept the high-profile gig as the halftime show performers during Super Bowl 53 in Atlanta due to the controversy surrounding former quarterback Colin Kaepernick. The first NFL player to take a knee during the national anthem in protest of social injustice, Kaepernick remains unsigned after leaving the San Francisco 49ers.

Asked by Frazier what he would say to those who “just want to be heard” and how his performance will speak to that, Levine replied, “They will be. That’s all I want to say.  Because I don’t want to spoil anything.”

“I’ve never been more excited in my life to present this to the people because I believe that it’s truly a reflection of all of us,” the “Girls Like Us” singer continued. “I’d like to think that people know where I stand as a human being after two decades of doing this. So what I’d say is we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, hopefully without becoming politicians, to make people understand we got you.”

Levine says the decision whether or not to accept the coveted halftime show gig weighed heavily on his mind.

“No one thought about it more than I did,” he told “Entertainment Tonight.”

“I spoke to many people,” the 39-year-old performer added, “most importantly though, I silenced all the noise and listened to myself, and made my decision about how I felt.”  

“I think that to have not done that would have been deeply irresponsible.”