After listening to Maroon 5’s latest studio album “V,” listeners may find themselves in an Adam Levine-induced daze.
For some strange reason, Levine is still able to make us delight in his falsetto and his band’s funky tunes. There isn’t anything particularly special about the album — it’s just another album filled with undeniably catchy pop-rock choruses and melodies.
Many of these songs will probably follow the same path as the album’s lead single “Maps” and chart in the top 10 of the Billboard 100. The album will most likely sell well, and we will all hear these songs on the radio, in commercials and in the local grocery store.
This rather formulaic process is a sad indictment of a band that once offered an exciting and fresh vibe to the pop-rock scene. But the successful Maroon 5 singles in the past seven years have been lifeless; they lack a soul.
“It Won’t Be Soon Before Long” from 2007 is the most cohesive Maroon 5 album to date and showcases some of the group’s best work — offering tracks that are fun to listen to and impeccably well written.
In 2010, the group introduced “Moves Like Jagger” — a fun-enough song that we all knew the chorus to, but was it actually about anything?
In 2012, the band offered us “Payphone” and “One More Night” to the world’s delight. They had fun music videos and the band’s live performance didn’t suffer after almost a decade. Sadly, the songs from “Overexposed” seemed plastic and slightly out of focus. This album also gave us “Daylight” and “Love Somebody” as singles, both which attempted to be meaningful mid-tempo ballads, but flailed lifelessly in the sea of pop music.
With “V” I braced myself for the worst, mainly because of the most boring and lazy album title ever. I’m still not even sure how to refer to it. Is it pronounced “five” (like the number) or “V” (like the letter)? The world may never know. This is almost as bad as when Ed Sheeran released an album entitled “+”.
The tracks on “V” completely lived up to my expectations. There are so many that are fun to listen to without saying anything worthwhile. “My Heart is Open” — featuring a duet between Levine and Gwen Stefani — sounds amazing, but lyrically the song is dead on arrival. The chorus is beyond heinous: “If you don’t ever say yeah/Let me hear you say yeah/Wanna hear you say yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah/Until my heart is open.” I shudder. The chorus of the song is more meaningless than every Icona Pop song to-date.
The song “Sugar” is another track with lazy production efforts. The song strongly resembles Katy Perry’s “Birthday” and is simply unbearable to listen to. The two songs are almost identical. Of course Maroon 5 knew this, and it’s shameful to think that they thought they might actually be able to get away with it.
“Unkiss Me” should’ve been sung by OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder and “Feelings” sounds like a Pharrell song that never quite happened.
Overall, “V” is a solid pop record, with songs that are undeniably funky. The surface of the album’s music is well-polished; Maroon 5 is very confident in their ability to make us sing and dance along. Maybe one day we will see a glimpse of substantive Maroon 5 from 2007. One can only hope.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Top Songs:
1. “Maps”
2. “It Was Always You”
3. “Feelings”
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