Maroon 5 memories singer12/19/2023 1 spot, making it one of Maroon 5’s biggest hits. “Girls Like You” spent seven weeks at the No. “Songwriters have become the people that make the music. “We live in a world that’s heavy on the songwriter,” says Levine. Even for the David Dobkin-directed music video for “Girls Like You,” which features Levine standing back-to-back with the likes of Gal Gadot, Ellen DeGeneres, Aly Raisman, Sarah Silverman and Tiffany Haddish (it’s logged nearly 1.3 billion views on YouTube), the singer personally reached out to each of the 25 women on his wish list.īut Levine’s bread and butter remains making hit songs, albeit in a dramatically changed landscape from the one in which Maroon 5 launched. Between his work with NBC (where he’s launching a show in 2019 called “Songland,” on which he’ll have a behind-the-scenes EP role), running his production company, 222, and being dad to two young daughters (Dusty, 2, and Gio, nine months) with model Behati Prinsloo, Levine has his hands full. In 2011, Levine started serving as a coach on The Voice, launching his own celebrity while expanding the band’s reach even further.The performer is also forced to rely on his own gut when it comes to managing his heavy schedule. The band toured relentlessly, venturing further into soul and Prince-style pop-rock for 2007’s It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, adding both polish and power for 2010’s Hands All Over. Influenced by singer Adam Levine’s then-recent baptism in hip-hop music and culture, 2002’s Songs About Jane was a slow burn, taking about two years to reach the upper end of the charts. Made up primarily of old high-school friends, the band formed in Los Angeles in the early 2000s after an earlier-and musically unrelated-incarnation called Kara’s Flowers failed to launch. The incident was, in a way, a precedent: Even as they ascended to mega-stardom, Maroon 5 has managed to retain a sense of edge and sexuality that seems incomparable with how huge they are, bringing the boudoir to the grocery store while simultaneously remaining one of the 21st century’s few mainstream bands-as in, that old-timey concoction of guitar, bass, drums and a singer-able to keep pace with the innovations of electronic music and hip-hop. "When the video for Maroon 5’s “This Love” hit MTV in 2004, the network censored two words: coming, as in “keep her coming every night,” and sinking, as in “sinking my fingertips into every inch of you.” It’s not that the words were dirty, of course, but the context-well, even as euphemism, they felt a little too R for a song so universally catchy, so G. With Levine’s tenor floating on a groove that manages to be both insistent and featherlight, “She Will Be Loved” sees Maroon 5 balance the cocksure attitude of so much of Songs About Jane with a sense of yearning, one that suggests his Lothario pose may really be just a useful disguise. Just as surprising is the softness that exists within it, too. Not even the irrepressible exuberance of “This Love”-which became the breakout hit that the band had been gunning for since their days at school-can entirely disguise the emotional turbulence at the core of Levine’s songs. Nor is this the last time his songwriting would vividly portray the to-and-fro of a toxic romance (“want to stay but you know very well I want you gone”), though, in the future, he’d shy away from expressing the kind of raw anger and hurt that’s so evident in “Shiver” and “Not Coming Home”. The first and most aggressive of the album’s hits, “Harder To Breathe” introduced the flair for high drama that would serve Levine very well in the years to come. In place of the Britpop and punk-pop leanings of Kara’s Flowers came the R&B bravado and funk-influenced rock that make Songs About Jane as arresting as it is immediately appealing. After an unsuccessful major-label album and a hiatus for studies at university, the four reconvened, added guitarist James Valentine and-after a long sojourn in New York, where Levine soaked up hip-hop culture and nursed a major but valuable heartache-reinvented themselves as Maroon 5. Four of their five original members-singer and rhythm guitarist Adam Levine, keyboardist Jesse Carmichael, bassist Mickey Madden and drummer Ryan Dusick-had already weathered an earlier life as Kara’s Flowers, the band they originally formed while still in school in Los Angeles. Then again, Maroon 5 had plenty of time to get ready for this moment. Brimming with attitude and eager to impress, Songs About Jane is a debut album that displays zero lack of confidence.
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