DATE | WEEKS |
May 29, 2004 | 1 |
I don't really remember my high school having cliques. I'm sure they must have existed somewhere, at some time. Films like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink and Mean Girls couldn't have been made in vacuums. But whether they were athletes, cheerleaders, outsiders, or somewhere in between, I don't remember any kids sticking too closely to those they perceived as their own kind. But maybe that's because I didn't fit neatly into any of those molds at the time, and so I moved between those circles pretty fluidly.
Deep down, however, a lot of us want to be invited to the cool kids' table. We may not admit it, and we may not even want to stay there too long, but the allure is too great to ignore. And if you're actively hiding from the crowd, you can't complain if someone you like doesn't notice you.
All this is to say that Maroon 5, and really Adam Levine, is a case of someone who may or may not have been invited to the cool kids' table, but just sat there one day and never left.
In some ways, I have to respect that. They're clearly a band that punched above its weight when they first rose to fame.
But in the case of Maroon 5, it feels like they long overstayed their welcome, only no one had the guts to speak up. It's fine if you want to come to the party; you don't need to help clean up once everybody's left.
Adam Levine was born in 1979 in Los Angeles. His parents divorced when he was seven, and he went to therapy afterward, which he later described as a "waste of time". His mother turned him on to her favorite musicians, including Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, and Fleetwood Mac.
He attended Brentwood School, where he met future Maroon 5 members Jesse Carmichael and Mickey Madden. The three, along with Ryan Dusick, formed a band called Kara's Flowers in 1994. The band performed frequently around Southern California and got signed to Reprise Records. In 1997, Kara's Flowers released their debut album The Fourth World and filmed a video for the single "Soap Disco".
Listening to "Soap Disco" for the first time while writing this post, it's... actually pretty good. I honestly didn't know what I was expecting, but the song wouldn't have sounded out of place on alternative radio in the late 90s. At the same time, it doesn't sound like it would've stood out on alternative radio in the late 90s, either. Despite a push from their label that included an appearance on Beverly Hills, 90210, the album flopped and the band was soon dropped from Reprise.
Kara's Flowers broke up afterward so Levine and Carmichael could attend college in New York State. Levine took an interest in R&B and hip-hop music that he was exposed to on the east coast. Eventually, the former Kara's Flowers members decided to form another band. Levine recruited guitarist James Valentine after the two bonded over their love of the band Phish (ugh). Thus, the five in Maroon 5 was complete.
Maroon 5 recorded their debut album Songs About Jane at the beginning of 2002, released it that summer. Songs About Jane made almost no impact at first, but Maroon 5 toured hard behind the album. They opened for former Number Ones artists Michelle Branch and Matchbox Twenty. Eventually, the first single from the album, "Harder to Breathe" became a minor hit on alternative radio, peaking on the Billboard chart at #31.
"Harder to Breathe" is the definition of a sleeper hit. It didn't debut on my chart until May 2003, by which point it had slowly crept onto pop and adult hits radio. It seemed like one of those songs that sounded slightly different from everything else on the radio. Levine has a presence on vocals that's just undeniable. It felt like some sort of rock-R&B-jazz hybrid that was fresh and smart at the time.
It eventually peaked at #4 on my chart that summer, and spent 26 weeks on the top 40. On the Hot 100, it would top out at #18 in the fall of 2003. The stage was set for Maroon 5, and when they got their pitch, they didn't miss.
"This Love" was the second single from Songs About Jane, released over a year and a half after the album came out. Levine wrote the song after his girlfriend broke up with him and moved away. Levine said he was "really excited on the other end because because the band was about to go make the record and I was ecstatic to go in the studio." Now breakups have been the subjects of pop songs throughout the genre's history. Taylor Swift has made a whole career out of ending romantic relationships. But I don't think I've ever heard someone so excited to turn lemons into lemonade as Levine was here.
Levine's narrator is infatuated with his now ex-girlfriend, even as she's getting on a plane right in front of him. "I was so high I did not recognize the fire burning in her eyes, the chaos that controlled my mind." He even brags about making her orgasm every night.
I'm not sure who to empathize with when I listen to the song. Levine's narrator doesn't really explain why she's breaking up with him; we've only got his side to go on. Levine explained in an interview that he wanted the lyrics to be explicit as possible so that it would "hit [his] ex-girlfriend like a ton of bricks" while still going over the heads of older listeners who were listening at work or in the car with kids.
I guess I've just never known heartbreak the way Levine has to really understand the song's lyrics. I've never been in a situation where I gave my heart to someone only for them to kick me to the curb. My version of heartbreak has always been letting someone get away before I ever got the chance to start a relationship.
To that end, maybe my love for the song came from wanting to be in the relationship in the first place, regardless of how it ended. It probably also helped that the video was horny as fuck. Directed by Sophie Muller, the video depicts the band performing in a courtyard while Levine has sex with his girlfriend.
I don't think I had seen a music video that came so close to depicting two people fucking as that one to that point. Fuse played the video uncensored, unlike MTV and VH1. There the scenes with Levine and his girlfriend were obscured by rose petals, and the word "coming" was edited out. MTV had produced that year's Super Bowl Halftime Show which saw Justin Timberlake expose one of Janet Jackson's breasts; fearful of blowback from the FCC, a bunch of videos deemed to have sexual content, including "This Love", were either censored or relegated to late night airplay.
Between the video and the song's funk-adjacent sound, I liked it well enough that it snuck in for a week at the top of my chart. It also biggest the band's biggest hit on the Hot 100 to that point, peaking at #5, as well as topping the Mainstream Top 40 and Adult Top 40 charts.
It's easy to forget that when you're 17, the stuff that sounded fresh to you has a decent chance of becoming stale in 20 years' time. That's not to say I don't like "This Love" anymore. It's just reached the point where it's achieved background noise status for me. If I heard it in a waiting room or an Uber, it wouldn't affect my day in the slightest. I guess that's the testament to a song becoming a big hit, but it also reflects on the general blandness that I find in Maroon 5 in 2024.
But in 2004, that wasn't the case. They were hot stuff, so much that I eventually went and got the Songs About Jane CD. And they weren't done making hits for me, either. We will see Maroon 5 again in this column soon.
EXTRAS
Like Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles", "This Love" was also featured on the soundtrack to the 2004 film White Chicks. However, I don't think it played in the movie, and if it did, I can't find the clip on Youtube. (I'm not about to watch the movie to confirm if it's there). So let's go with this clip of Maroon 5 performing "This Love" at President Barack Obama's inaugural ball in 2009.
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