Oh, Maroon 5, where, oh where, did you go wrong? I can still recall the days when this LA-based funk rock band was churning out adequately-performed, boring pop tunes which one could easily ignore and they’d simply float through their career, one mid-tempo love song at a time. Unfortunately for the general public, or at least unfortunately for music snobs like myself, the band seems to have taken a turn for the awful over the past few years with their two most recent releases, “Hands all Over” and “Overexposed.”
Until these two albums, the main adjective I’d use to describe the bulk of Maroon 5’s work is inoffensive. Their particular brand of bland, white-funk was the type of thing one would expect to hear on a TV medical drama or an adult contemporary station while randomly flipping through radio stations. Songs like “Harder to Breathe” and “This Love,” which originally garnered them success, share this trait and set the tone rather well for the type of music they’d be presenting until their shift for the worse.
Maroon 5 didn’t really have enough substance or personality to evoke either a particularly strong response either way. They were the musical equivalent of a stale, unsalted cracker. There wasn’t anything especially disgusting or offensive about their music, but there’s no real reason why one would have attempted to seek it out or get excited about it. This changed upon the release of the single “Moves Like Jagger.”
With this vapid, poorly-written and despicably catchy piece of music, Maroon 5 was suddenly thrust back into the public consciousness. Somehow, a band that, for most of its career could have made The Fray look interesting and innovative, was being given a second chance at the limelight. A large part of this seems to be the fact that this particular track was not primarily written by the band, with the bulk of the work being done by industry songwriters Benjamin Levin and Shellback.
Now while the music written by most of these mercenary songwriters could be compared unfavorably to being given a colonoscopy with a cactus, one cannot deny that it has a tendency to be catchy, and for whatever reason, it grabs the public consciousness. “Moves Like Jagger” did this for Maroon 5 and suddenly, love it or hate it, millions were at least aware of this song.
Having used outside writers on “Moves Like Jagger“ with great success (if one can consider writing one of the worst songs of 2011 a success), the band continued this tradition on their follow-up album, “Overexposed.” The result was an even “poppier” album with less similarities to the band’s early albums. Between the studio auto-tune somehow making Adam Levine’s girlish falsetto sound even worse, and the injection of dubstep elements (which this critic has gone on record as saying is one of the worst things in modern music) into several of the songs, the band managed to make me despise a band that I hadn’t even liked in the first place.
One of the worst offenders from this album is, of course, the currently inescapable “Payphone.” With its grating vocal melody, teenage emo lyrics and a lazy half-baked rap by Wiz Khalifa, this is by far the worst the band has ever been. It just goes to show that if you find yourself in a dull, mediocre band looking for a way to make it big, there’s one easy solution: become actively terrible.
One and a Half Stars out of Five
Until these two albums, the main adjective I’d use to describe the bulk of Maroon 5’s work is inoffensive. Their particular brand of bland, white-funk was the type of thing one would expect to hear on a TV medical drama or an adult contemporary station while randomly flipping through radio stations. Songs like “Harder to Breathe” and “This Love,” which originally garnered them success, share this trait and set the tone rather well for the type of music they’d be presenting until their shift for the worse.
Maroon 5 didn’t really have enough substance or personality to evoke either a particularly strong response either way. They were the musical equivalent of a stale, unsalted cracker. There wasn’t anything especially disgusting or offensive about their music, but there’s no real reason why one would have attempted to seek it out or get excited about it. This changed upon the release of the single “Moves Like Jagger.”
With this vapid, poorly-written and despicably catchy piece of music, Maroon 5 was suddenly thrust back into the public consciousness. Somehow, a band that, for most of its career could have made The Fray look interesting and innovative, was being given a second chance at the limelight. A large part of this seems to be the fact that this particular track was not primarily written by the band, with the bulk of the work being done by industry songwriters Benjamin Levin and Shellback.
Now while the music written by most of these mercenary songwriters could be compared unfavorably to being given a colonoscopy with a cactus, one cannot deny that it has a tendency to be catchy, and for whatever reason, it grabs the public consciousness. “Moves Like Jagger” did this for Maroon 5 and suddenly, love it or hate it, millions were at least aware of this song.
Having used outside writers on “Moves Like Jagger“ with great success (if one can consider writing one of the worst songs of 2011 a success), the band continued this tradition on their follow-up album, “Overexposed.” The result was an even “poppier” album with less similarities to the band’s early albums. Between the studio auto-tune somehow making Adam Levine’s girlish falsetto sound even worse, and the injection of dubstep elements (which this critic has gone on record as saying is one of the worst things in modern music) into several of the songs, the band managed to make me despise a band that I hadn’t even liked in the first place.
One of the worst offenders from this album is, of course, the currently inescapable “Payphone.” With its grating vocal melody, teenage emo lyrics and a lazy half-baked rap by Wiz Khalifa, this is by far the worst the band has ever been. It just goes to show that if you find yourself in a dull, mediocre band looking for a way to make it big, there’s one easy solution: become actively terrible.
One and a Half Stars out of Five
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