Diamond In The Rough: Maroon 5
Trying to find the positives and the hidden talents of an otherwise hated artist. This episode: Maroon 5.
Controversial take, but I feel like music discourse would be a lot more tolerable if we admitted to ourselves how often we project onto certain artists and their success. That goes both ways, really. We like seeing our favorite artists thrive and achieve landmark goals. It makes us feel like we’re a part of something bigger, and our tastes are being validated by seeing that artist get to #1 or have a big hit single that goes viral on Tik Tok. At the same time, we also like seeing our more hated artists fail. To see them try and achieve something so big and successful only to get what we interpret as “diminishing returns”. Or worse, we start stretching ourselves by claiming any success they do get is artificial, propped up by businessmen in shadows and products of the industry trying to dictate our tastes. Either way, our views on music popularity are always tinged by our own biases, no matter how much we try to deny it. I’ve seen a lot of this recently as Olivia Rodrigo and BTS both battle for the #1 spot on Billboard. Both are huge success stories, but because one has to be in competition with the other, both sides of the battle are flinging shit at each other trying to claim that one is cheating their way to the top and ruining the other’s “organic” rise. I mean you can accuse Olivia Rodrigo of being an industry plant and only becoming famous thanks to her Disney connections, or you can blame the success of “Butter” on the fanbase abusing and gaming Billboard’s system to inflate the song’s stats, I just think it’s pointless bickering. Because at the end of the day, the point isn’t that you genuinely want to see Billboard be fair in their ruling and give the “organic” song the honor of being the biggest song in the country, it’s that you want to see your fav win and be written in the history books as an important moment of this year.
I saw this comment a while ago that tried to claim that despite Maroon 5’s best efforts to make their current single, “Beautiful Mistakes” with Megan Thee Stallion, a big, massive, world-defining hit, the song ended up underperforming. Which if you’ve actually been watching the song’s chart performance, is complete bullshit. Aside from the implication that any song that hits the Top 20 would be underperforming being absurd, “Beautiful Mistakes” has been very successful across the board. Of course, it was always going to do disgustingly well on radio, but streaming has always been fairly strong, and its sales have been consistently good since its release. Hell, since their most recent album, JORDI, came out, it’s probably going to end up in the Top 10 within the next week.
Once again, this idea that a Maroon 5 song is underperforming, especially when in the same comment they claim that Maroon 5 “insulted modern bands” because of an out of context statement everyone made fun of last year, is clearly projecting against a band that for a decade now has become a pop critic’s favorite punching bag. The very definition of the generic pop act that everyone thinks of when they think of bad pop music. Obviously, Maroon 5 has their fans, but realistically they’re just normal people who go about their lives and don’t watch Todd In The Shadows videos all day.
But there’s also this sentiment that Maroon 5 wasn’t always like this. At some point early in their careers, they were genuinely really talented, had great songs that many hail as classics of their era, and actually sounded like a band instead of an Adam Levine solo career vehicle. But in the transition between the late 2000s and early 2010s, something went wrong. The band sold out, or there was a new creative direction, and suddenly their music just… sucked.
What I want to explore in this episode of Diamond In The Rough is to pinpoint what exactly happened for Maroon 5 to go from pop-rock icons to mediocre radio filler. We could even go a bit further and ask… did they actually get worse? What if this whole time, Maroon 5 were perfectly fine and aren’t nearly as bad as everyone thinks they are?
After going through their discography, from fan-favorite Songs About Jane to the tragically titled Red Pill Blues, I was kind of surprised by what my answer ended up being. In that, I am more positive on this band than I used to be… but only barely.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cover Maroon 5’s 2000s albums at first. Mostly cuz the point of this series is to find the value in otherwise bad albums, and the general consensus is that Songs About Jane and It Won’t Be Soon Before Long are good albums. I’m not breaking new ground or sparking debate when I say both these albums are excellent. Songs About Jane isn’t a mind-boggling masterpiece or anything, but its best songs are right up there among the best pop-rock of this era. The band has great synergy and a knack for hooks that are not only incredibly catchy but they’re also elevated by Adam Levine’s vocals. Adam Levine is definitely the brainchild of this band, even back when they had more of a role in the production and writing. You can’t have Maroon 5 without him, because even when his voice can be a bit screechy at times, he has a magnetic energy and fierce sexuality that makes these songs that much more exciting and even a little seductive. I know people like to joke about Adam Levine being a sex symbol, but in these older albums, I at least get it. Particularly when he sticks to his middle register and gets just enough bass to give off that bad boy energy that I’m sure made lots of women in the 2000s feel some type of way about him. Even in their ballads, which are typically weaker than the firey bangers, Adam Levine has a passion in his voice that makes the relationships he tells all the more romantic and charming. There’s a reason why “She Will Be Loved” has persisted as the most popular 2000s single of their career. It’s a tremendous song!
I don’t do number ratings for albums anymore, but I will note that I gave It Won’t Be Soon Before Long my highest honor with the full five stars on Rate Your Music. Five stars for me doesn’t mean 10/10 necessarily, but it’s reserved for albums I love fully and unconditionally. The albums that stick with me for their best songs, their best moments, and just overall how they made me feel listening to it in full. And the reason why this album got there is very simple: I just loved everything about it. It takes the formula they started with on Songs About Jane and upped the jams up to eleven. I LOVE all of these songs! There’s so much energy and passion to them that it reminded me of my favorite band Marianas Trench’s material at their peak. Bombastic, catchy, a bit messy in its relationships, but made with a lot of love and passion. The closing song “Back At Your Door” cemented my love for this album. If your album could end on an extremely strong note, it’s going to resonate with me and I’ll always look back on the album positively. The angsty melodrama of this song as Levine finds himself bent to the will of one woman’s love as the production ends off with the bombast and scale of a concert ender is exactly why this album works so well for me. It’s so much fun and I could tell the band is having fun as well.
Maybe that’s the problem.
Hands All Over holds a very weird place in Maroon 5’s discography. This is arguably the “last” good Maroon 5 album, and even then I feel like its perception is a bit mixed. It doesn’t really have the memorable singles that the other two have, with “Misery” being a big hit, and the other singles kind of underperforming. Plus, the album is pretty different from the last two, where almost all of the rock elements have been swapped out for a disco-pop sound that catered a lot more to the current pop landscape. Now, my hot take is that I actually think Hands All Over is better than Songs About Jane. There are two duds on the album, namely the bizarre title track and the unfortunately mediocre closing ballad with Lady Antebellum, but for the most part, I actually think the disco-pop sound works really well with Maroon 5! Yeah, the pop-rock brings out the band’s biting energy a little better, but Adam Levine’s swagger carries into the swing and flashy aesthetic of the slicker grooves really well! I even really like “Misery” in spite of its braying obnoxiousness. But I think it’s hard to deny something changed with this album. It certainly feels like a career transition, and lukewarm reception probably meant Maroon 5 was going to start fading a bit from the mainstream. In another life, this probably would signal them building an underground following, as they keep making albums that aren’t huge, but still big enough to have a dedicated fanbase. Hell, maybe they could experiment a little bit more and see how else they can bend their sound while keeping up their spirit.
And then The Voice happened.
See, I said that Hands All Over’s singles underperformed, but that’s not technically true. Mostly because the standalone single “Moves Like Jagger” was tacked on to the album at the very end after it became an unexpected phenomenon. They had already gone to #1 with “Makes Me Wonder”, but “Moves Like Jagger” was a massive hit that got boosted thanks to Adam Levine’s spot as a judge on The Voice, which was really taking off at the time. Hell, the song’s featured star, Christina Aguillera, was also a judge on the same show. The song is also labeled on Spotify as the “Studio Recording From The Voice Performance”, so it’s safe to say The Voice essentially launched this song to become Maroon 5’s biggest hit to date.
But it’s not like their 2000s material at all. Hell, it’s not even all that similar to the songs on Hands All Over. It’s got a disco groove, but the production is far poppier and more plastic, complete with the radio polish that made it an easy favorite for Top 40 radio, and the lyrics are now reminiscent of the club boom that had been blowing up in the early 2010s, meeting a cute girl and getting hot and heavy on the dance floor. Moves like Mick Jagger.
I guess?????
Truth be told I’ve actually always loved “Moves Like Jagger”. It was my first Maroon 5 song, so I didn’t realize they didn’t usually make music like this, but I was always drawn in by the infectious hook and Adam Levine’s slick voice. Honestly, I stand by it! It’s a fun little nostalgia trip for me and the loose, carefree groove keeps me listening. Some would call this a sell-out, but I don’t believe in sell-outs. Pop music has just as much value as rock music. It’s just a preference whether you prefer one or the other.
That’s actually one reason I’ve softened on Maroon 5 as I listened to their discography. I think a lot of the hate surrounding Maroon 5’s pop turn was simply going from rock to mainstream pop. Which I won’t blame anyone for, a shift in genre like that could feel like you’re losing a lot of potential that’s now being thrown away for commercial appeal. At the same time though, as we move into their next album, Overexposed, the truth is revealed that Maroon 5 never really changed. Their production style just did. Maybe a bit of the band did too, but it’s not that jarring of a difference between their early output vs their modern output.
That being said, this is where my job gets harder.
Overexposed is the first of Maroon 5’s “bad era”. Their lead single “Payphone” turned out to be a huge hit, but now the public opinion on the band has completely split. Adam Levine’s voice is a lot more grating than usual, and it sounds like the “band” on this song is nonexistent. Aside from maybe some of the drums, the whole song sounds processed, and the other members don’t even get writing credits on this one. I mean, it works for the sound of 2012 as the club boom fades from its apex and pleasant melody pop songs like this become easy money, but over time the song has just gotten worse and worse.
As I listened through Overexposed, I tried to process why this album was underwhelming me so much. As I said, the band didn’t change all that much, they just shifted to a pop sound. But the pop sound of this album is so dull and lacking in a strong foundation. Even if the vocal melodies are catchy enough, the songs themselves just don’t have that spark that made earlier Maroon 5 albums so good. Normally, a song like “One More Night” would be a great fit for Maroon 5. It’s catty, full of mistakes, seductive in its temptation to keep going back to a shitty ex because the sexual tension is so unbearable, they probably would have killed this on It Won’t Be Soon Before Long. But instead, we get this awful-sounding reggae beat with clunky drums and Levine for once phoning it in and turning in a half-hearted performance with none of the raw sexuality that made songs like “This Love” work so well. Instead of being sexy and dangerously exciting, it’s limp and obnoxious. I can’t STAND it.
I think from there is when I noticed how out of it Adam Levine sounds. I came to this realization a while ago, but I don’t think his shrill falsetto was ever the problem. If anything, it would have been a selling point on earlier albums. Nothing wrong with finding it annoying, of course, but the falsetto works when Levine has the energy and charisma to make his performance magnetizing and fun. Again I bring up Marianas Trench and how their frontman, Josh Ramsay, has a similar falsetto that works to better effect because he believes in every note he sings. But when Levine spends most of the album sleepwalking through it, it loses a lot of the magic of those earlier albums.
CW: Mild strobe light effects
I will shout out some of the songs I do like on this album at least. It’s mostly mediocre and underwhelming, but it’s not all bad! The best song on it is “Lucky Strike”, which I think also highlights another issue with the album. Part of what made those early albums great was their basslines, and how that groove carries the song’s rhythm and makes it all the more fun in the moment. “Lucky Strike” does have that rhythm, particularly with its heartbeat-like stomp in the drums. The way that builds to the hook is incredibly exciting, and while it’s not as good as the best moments of the previous albums, it’s still a blast! “Doin’ Dirt” does something similar, but isn’t quite as good. Still recommend that song though, it’s fun!
I actually really like one of the late album singles, “Love Somebody”! It’s a bit of a generic yearning song, but I like the chorus a lot, and Adam Levine does sound a little more alive in that song than he does in other parts of the album. Of course, all of these positives are stripped away when you get to a song like “Tickets”, one of the worst songs in their entire discography. It tries really hard to combine the old rock sound with an electropop spin, but it sounds terrible and Adam Levine’s singing is worse than usual. Hideous song.
I was hopeful that from here V would fare a little better by comparison, but it actually turned out a little worse. Part of me wanted to be nicer to this era since I have a weird nostalgia attached to it. Weirdly enough, this is the exception where unlike Overexposed and the later Red Pill Blues, I mostly liked the singles for this album! “Sugar” is inoffensive, maybe bland, but I’m still really fond of its cheesy romance. Plus, as I’ve said before, this band works really well with disco-pop grooves, and this one really works for me, then and now! On a similar note, I never hated the album’s most reviled singles, “Maps” and “Feelings”. “Maps” is part of that weird nostalgia where I remember hearing it a lot during one of the happier moments in my life. It’s not their best song, but I always did really like its galloping groove and anthemic hook!
Meanwhile, I actually think “Feelings” is the best song on the album. I didn’t even need Sean Faye-Wolf from Diamond Axe Studios to be convinced. It’s that disco-pop groove! It’s incredibly catchy, and Adam Levine sounds really into it with his little adlibs and dorky flow. Plus, I’ve always liked the band leaning into their sleezier, douchier side, so this kind of “steal your girl” song gets me hooked in both the song and the performance! Yes, even with the high-pitched “feeEEEEEElings” in the chorus. Again, it’s never the falsetto that’s the problem, it’s how you use it.
Unfortunately the rest of the album is kinda shit. Not even in an absurdly bad way, just in a dull, forgettable way. I only really liked one deepcut, that being “Leaving California” which brings back the pop-rock power ballad that Maroon 5 were really good at. “Coming Back For You” wasn’t bad either I guess. Other than that? Every song was either dull or straight up bad. I certainly haven’t warmed up to “Animals” and its dreadful attempts to be dangerous. Much like how ending It Won’t Be Soon Before Long on “Back At Your Door” made me appreciate the album more, ending V with the failed single “This Summer” tacked on made me dislike the album more. Horrid song, one of their absolute worst.
From here, I had a conflicting opinion on Maroon 5. Having heard their early output compared to the Maroon 5 I grew up with… yeah, they’re bad. Pretty hard to deny they had a sharp downturn when becoming pop radio darlings. The Voice allowed Adam Levine to be set for life. He made it. He won. And thus, music became less of a passion for him. He left The Voice in its thirteenth season, but his music with Maroon 5 almost feels like a side project that happens to get a lot of radioplay. Even members like PJ Morton are off doing their own thing to much more acclaimed success. I think where a lot of the hate towards Maroon 5 comes from somewhere other than the music. Which is bad, sure, but it’s mostly mediocre instead of outright bad. It’s the feeling of betrayal as watching a band that once had passion and energy devolve into complacent and privileged. But like… is the music really that bad? For Overexposed and V at least, I don’t think so. It’s mostly just forgettable and lame, but the public dislike of their image among music nerds and especially those who grew up with Todd In The Shadows, I guess that disappointment got really amplified, even if they haven’t had an outright terrible album yet.
Key word being, yet.
Look, I know the whole point of this series is to find the good in otherwise bad albums, try to offer a point of optimism in an artist that otherwise gets unfairly hated on, but I can’t. Red Pill Blues is atrocious. One of the most soulless and worthless albums I’ve ever heard. From the terrible name that Levine clearly didn’t think through, to the assumed lead singles getting scrapped off the album and dumped into the bonus tracks, to this ugly album cover that reeks of apathetic laziness, to its dull, flavorless, half-assed songs that can’t even be bothered to be absurdly bad. This album isn’t obnoxious like The Click, it’s worse. They’re all songs that evoke barely any feeling in me except apathy or annoyance, with a few genuinely terrible songs sprinkled in for good measure. “Girls Like You” is unironically Top 3 of the album, and that song fucking SUCKS. Meanwhile, bonus track and redacted lead single “Don’t Wanna Know” is the worst single Maroon 5 ever put out, with “Lips On You” earning the coveted honor of being the worst song the band has ever made. I hated listening to this. Even with its short length excluding the bonus tracks, I knew that I was wasting my time.
But fine. I can name a few things this album did that I liked, even if only for a moment. “What Lovers Do” with SZA is a decent song. Not a great one, barely a good one, but it has a decent bass groove and catchy hook. “Who I Am” sucks, but I thought the intro with Lunchmoney Lewis was nice. Shame his actual verse didn’t fit the song at all, but he’s no stranger to mediocre guest verses on bad albums. Finally, the best song on the album is, surprisingly enough, the ending song, “Closure”. Yes, the twelve-minute long Maroon 5 song. The song itself is fine, but I actually kind of liked the jam session that takes up a majority of the song! Not something I’d really want to listen to again, but it was nice hearing some fun little melodies, progressions, even a saxophone! It was like watching the credits to the album, a gimmick I’ve always liked in album endings. Then again, what does it say about the album that the best part was a literal jam session?
After this I went back and listened to some of the bonus tracks they’ve made over the years. I wasn’t sure if I should cover them since I glossed over them with the AJR review, but I think there are a few songs that are worth keeping in the Maroon 5 canon. Both songs on Hands All Over Me are great! They provide a much better way to end the album than “Out of Goodbyes” and “Moves Like Jagger” do, and part of me wishes that if “No Curtain Call” was the closer before “Moves Like Jagger”, it’d be just as good of an album as It Won’t Be Soon Before Long! Speaking of which, that has a b-side album, and while they’re mostly fine, I also felt like almost all of them would have ended up as the worst on the album anyway. It didn’t surprise me that most of them were cut. I will say that “Until You’re Over Me” and “Losing My Mind” are definitely keepers though. Weirdly enough, I actually liked Overexposed’s bonus songs for the most part, though I know why they were cut. They’re such stark style shifts from the rest of the album that they just wouldn’t fit. “Wipe Your Eyes” has a lot of the same energy as some of their previous albums, but loses points for this really shrill note Adam keeps singing in the background. “Wasted Years” is kind of showmany with its bright horns and jazzy tempo. I actually like it a lot! Unfortunately it ends on a weird note with the awkward ukulele ballad “Let’s Stay Together”, where Adam just doesn’t have the voice to pull it off. Moving over to V, this one’s more of a mixed bag. “Shoot Love” ended up being surprisingly enjoyable for me! His voice gets a bit shrill on the chorus, but there’s a dark urgency to this production that works a lot better than their attempts on “Animal”. Plus, I’m always a sucker for well-placed timpanis! “Sex And Candy” fucking sucks though. Ignore that one. Finally, the deluxe songs on Red Pill Blues… Well, they’re no good. I like the concept of “Denim Jacket”, but the song is ungodly boring. “Plastic Rose” is straight up forgettable, just like the rest of the album. And I never liked any of the two singles released before the album, nor does the Cardi B remix of “Girls Like You” make the song any better. The one exception is “Visions”, which might actually be better than the entire album. The production has a lively bounce to it, the chorus is catchy in a lowkey vibe way, and even if Adam Levine is still phoning it in, I like the lyrics of seeing visions of a past love even when you’re trying to act like it’s not affecting you.
Listening to these bonus songs after Red Pill Blues made me realize that I don’t hate the band. At least, not anymore. Even if I don’t like their post-sell out albums, especially not Red Pill Blues, I remember asking myself why exactly we hate this band so much. If we’re mad because they used to be good… well, that ship sailed a long time ago. Like it or not, this is Maroon 5. They never really changed in terms of their subject matter, Adam Levine’s voice didn’t get worse, I’m not even sure the actual band took a backseat so much as they focused on different instruments or specialities. I think all that happened was they took a different approach. They leaned toward what direction pop was going in and built their sound from there. When the club boom happened and The Voice grew in popularity, Adam Levine made a big pop radio hit that would go off at parties. On Overexposed, they leaned into more electronic and synth sounds that were popular on pop songs at the time. V was the time when pop underwent an identity crisis, so the sound went a little more all over the place while still keeping a strong emphasis on hooks. Music got a little darker and more numb as the looming threat of Trump’s presidency exhausted everyone, so for Red Pill Blues, they made their music sound like shit. They’re trend chasers, but not in the way most people think of a trend chaser. They go for sounds that are agreeable enough to pass by even during entire genre takeovers (namely trap), but they don’t make it obvious that they’re blending in with everyone else.
Once I realized that, I asked myself if that was really worth getting angry over? The truth is, even when they have constant hits on the radio and the Hot 100, they’re actually very ignorable. The only reason you’d get angry at hearing a Maroon 5 song on the radio is if you bring attention to it. Hence why I brought up projection at the beginning. Wanting to see the artists you don’t like lose even when they’re very clearly doing just fine. I’m sure they’ll feel some illusion of justice when JORDI turns out to have very weak opening sales next week, even though the pandemic has fucked over the industry so much that EVERYONE is seeing diminishing returns. Not being able to tour takes a lot out of album sales, and unless you’re currently one of the biggest names in the world like Olivia Rodrigo or Polo G, you’re likely going to lose some steam from your last release. Even Justin Bieber’s opening numbers for Justice fell short of what Changes opened to, an album that has one and a half hits compared to the following album’s six. But Maroon 5 is going to take a big loss, so that means it’s over, right? After decades of plaguing pop music and giving us the worst music imaginable, they’re finally submitting to the success of real, good music. Right?
JORDI is fine. It’s not great, it’s not terrible either, but it’s also not the mediocre slog that made me ambivalent on Overexposed and V. If Maroon 5’s goal as a band is to blend in by following trends that anyone can easily embrace, I think they achieved it adequately on JORDI. This era’s current vibe is, well, vibes. As people are gravitating more and more towards music that focuses on atmosphere and coasting, Maroon 5 have latched on to a west-coast kind of sound that perfectly soundtracks driving down the highway and soaking in the sun. Not so much summer music as it is simply plesant music. And to be fair, I think that’s what Maroon 5 has always been trying to achieve, but the more fitting focus works pretty well in spots here! I do like the album’s current hit, “Beautiful Mistakes” for its languid production and solid guest verse from Megan Thee Stallion. “Nobody’s Love” has a pretty great vibe and memorable chorus, even if the song itself feels a bit slothy in its verses. And what will likely be propped as the next single, “Lost”, is maybe my favorite single of theirs since “Feelings”! I love the dark, muted groove, and the chorus is GREAT running music when the beat drops. “Remedy” with Stevie Nicks is a pretty solid summer song, though I do think their harmonization in the chorus sounds a bit weird. Kept it from being a better song. My favorite deepcut is definitely “Convince Me Otherwise”, although that might be because H.E.R. is such a natural at this sort of song that even Adam Levine not really putting his all into it is rendered irrelevant by the slick as hell guitars that swim across the track!
The song that surprised me the most was “One Light” with Bantu, the album’s mandatory pandemic song where Adam Levine tries to find some hope and comfort in quarantine within his family. It surprised me because it was the first time I ever heard Adam Levine sing about anything personal. Pretty much all of Maroon 5’s music can be summed up as “I’m horny and/or lonely”. Hence why I rarely talked about the lyrical content aside from its concept. They aren’t wordsmiths, and they don’t need to be. Still, hearing Adam Levine talk about his kids and extended family was weirdly a shock to me. Like, this guy has his own life outside of Maroon 5. But he never talked about it until this specific song.
It reminded me of why I felt so underwhelmed by “Memories”, the album’s lead single dedicated to their late manager Jordan Feldstein, whom the album was named after. Jordi was a huge reason why Maroon 5 became an unkillable band. He’s been there since the beginning, and I can’t imagine his death would have been easy on the members, especially Adam. And yet, “Memories” didn’t feel like a tribute to a late friend. Its lyrics are so vague that they could be about any memory. I’ve seen it interpreted as a message for the fans, which while not true according to Adam Levine, it’s not like I can’t see how you’d come to that conclusion. Just made me wish Maroon 5 did something more for someone who did so much for them. Allow themselves to be personal instead of aiming to please everyone. Then again, who am I to tell someone how to grieve or how to make their art? This song got a remix on the deluxe edition starring YG and a posthumous verse from the late Nipsey Hussle. I do like it more than the original, mainly because YG dedicates his verse to Nipsey, to whom he was close friends. Meanwhile, Nipsey’s verse, while short is a bit more general about the loss he’s experienced in his life, and I think from there the song clicked with me differently. It’s not so much meant to be about Jordi specifically, but a general moment of grieving as they try to find the silver lining in the memories they hold dear. You know what? I find that admirable, and even if it’s not how I would have done it, I appreciate the position nonetheless.
We’ll probably be stuck with Maroon 5 forever. If the Super Bowl Curse wouldn’t kill them, nothing will. But I think I’m at peace with that. I’m not sure I walked out of this discography liking or even respecting Maroon 5, but I have purged out my last remaining hatred for them. They can keep doing their thing, and I’ll tune in for the moments they strike gold. Even if it happens like, once every ten years.