Review Summary: More depressing than a funeral, Maroon 5 stops plateauing and starts nosediving here.
Man, listening to this album in sequence after vibing to Maroon 5's first three albums is f*cking
depressing. I almost picture myself in an intimate nightclub setting with an amazing live band up on stage thrilling a live audience, only to be taken aside by a record executive who promises them fortune beyond their wildest dreams. Next thing you know, the world knows their name, but their music is a shell of itself, completely stripped bare of any personality or zeal. That's what it feels like to jam out to the bouncy, soulful
Hands All Over and then get abruptly slapped in the face with
Overexposed. It's night and day. Two diametrically different identities and sensibilities under the same umbrella and instantly recognizable name.
What the f*ck happened?
Actually, don't answer that question. We know what happened. Maroon 5's first decade in the mainstream consciousness was packed with chart topping singles, but by the time 2010's
Hands All Over was released, the band was slowly fading into obscurity. Pretty much every band who zeroed in on that safe, tepid adult contemporary shtick in the mid to late 2000s had an extremely short shelf life; think The Fray, Coldplay, OneRepublic and the now surprisingly resurgent Daughtry. Adam Levine and co. were doomed to suffer the exact same fate, when along came "Moves Like Jagger", the stroke of electropop genius that revitalized their fame and prolonged their inevitable senescence by several years. Thrust back into the forefront of a rapidly changing pop music scene, Maroon 5 attempted to capitalize on the success of their unexpected megahit. Suffice to say, they banked in big time, but they forgot to actually make
good God damn music in the first place.
Gotta give Maroon 5 credit, though. They give up the ghost pretty early on with
Overexposed. Be it by accident or design, it is immediately apparent to the listener they are trying to recapture the swagger and zest of "Moves Like Jagger." "One More Night" simply could never stack up. The band (I feel gross calling them that now) tries piling on the synthetic drum loops and high end pop beats, but instead of an irresistible banger like the former song, you're forced to endure one of the tackiest melodies you'll ever come across. Adam Levine sings his ass off, even if it's clear to all of us that he has to labor to tailor his voice to these compositions.
Fifteen year old me melted for "Payphone" the first time I heard it, and a decade later, it actually hasn't soured on me. It's a completely different beast than the funky neosoul stylings of
Songs About Jane, but Adam Levine proves he can still slip into the role of the disgruntled ex-lover like nobody else. Another thing "Payphone" has going for it is that its an absolute event. Tame beats and glimmering keys on the opening bars give way to a swelling chorus and Levine knocks it out of the park. Save for that....
interesting Wiz Khalifa cameo, file this one as a keeper.
"Daylight" is a
taste of vintage Maroon 5. It would likely fit in just fine as a B-side from either of their previous two albums, playing more to their familiar soft rock strengths with its rare inclusion of James Valentine's satiny riffs. I'm guessing the padded vocal layering is supposed to compensate for Adam succumbing to the temptation of the format badly on the chorus, because as innocuous as this track is, it's hard not to dock the band for playing it a little too safe. "Lucky Strike" is an even bigger tease. This one marries the best of all of Maroon 5's wheelhouse faculties. Those funky riffs on the intro are a treat and Adam rides the wave of those pulsating beats on the chorus. It's fundamentally lacking the
spark of the Maroon 5 of old, but it'll do in a pinch. "The Man Who Never Lied" settles back into the flagship pop niche this album caters to, but it's another passable affair.
"Love Somebody" is almost nostalgic to revisit, but not in a good way. It's one of those seminal Maroon 5 hits that never really faded away. If you've spent five minutes in a grocery store at any point in the last ten years, you've probably had this one funnel its way into your subconscious. It's not even innocuous enough to justify choosing to come back to. It reeks of 2012 dance pop, a song that wasn't built to last. Perhaps that's what makes it particularly emblematic of Maroon 5's broader career arc. It's dated, tired and made specifically for the era it was released in, with zero staying power whatsoever.
Adam's vocal performance on the opening bars of "Ladykiller" sees him randomly go a few octaves below, almost trying to alter his tonality and give it a rougher bent. It honestly reminded me of someone like Yellowcard's Ryan Key, minus the personality and live instruments in the background. And of course, Adam reaches for his trademark falsetto on the chorus. The funky pop rock bridge is a nice change of pace, but the chorus is boring as hell. The lyrics are some of the most interesting in the Maroon 5 canon, but try as it might, it just doesn't have the edge and strut the band's back catalog possesses.
"Fortune Teller" and "Sad" honestly irritate the f*ck out of me. If the band was trying in earnest up to this point, they sure as hell botched these two. Adam sounds a tad robotic vocally and the lyrics match. It sounds like someone who's offensively out of touch with the listener trying to come across as deep and thought provoking. Adam sounds a lot better on the latter track, which I suppose is a decent trade-off for the insanely obvious "this is filler for the sake of contract fulfillment" tone in the lyrics and composition. Adam slips the "whoa-oh-oh" nonsense into another stale soundscape on "Tickets"; I don't know, maybe there's some quota he was obliged to meet. But then we get howled at when "Doin' Dirt" starts up. Hmm...that was definitely a thing that happened, just gonna slowly back away here. Stylistically, it borrows the same plastic synth glissade you've heard a million times (cue up "Any Other Way" by the Backstreet Boys to see what I mean). "Beautiful Goodbyes" closes out this mess with some painfully derivative guitar pop. It's on this curtain call that the listener is especially reminded of how categorically broken Maroon 5 sounds in comparison to the stimulating "Moves Like Jagger." You couldn't have dreamed up two more different sounding album finales if you tried. Levine sounds just fine, but there's practically nothing going on otherwise. If this is Maroon 5 no longer playing quick and loose with the inevitable and actually going down the road "Moves Like Jagger" pointed them towards, this is a pretty pathetic way to cap off their inaugural showing in such a format.
Quite the jarring contrast, eh? Pepperidge Farm remembers a time when you could digest an entire Maroon 5 album and be pleasantly taken aback by the majority of earnest and soulful offerings, even if a couple of missteps got lodged in between along the way. On
Overexposed, you get the polar opposite. It's mostly inoffensive and boring filler with some scarce traces of the band we used to know scattered in the rubble. Adam Levine sounds great for the most part and to the band's credit, they managed to scrape their way out of this album cycle without any
major duds;
Jordi overdosed on those. But everything bleeds into each other, Adam's voice is the only consistently interesting aspect. It's no longer a true live band full of talented dudes feeding off one another. It's a frontman and a bunch of prominent producers (Max Martin and Shellback among others) seamstressing everything that goes on to his voice.
Overexposed is more depressing than a funeral, because we never got to have a proper goodbye with the band Maroon 5 once was. They were and suddenly, they weren't, and the rest of us got stuck with the rotting away in real time version of them we never asked for. I suppose I appreciate the morbid honesty. If Maroon 5 wasn't going to settle for the sooner found obscurity of rapidly diminishing returns after
Hands All Over, selling their souls to the devil was probably the only other option. They extended their commercial prime for several years longer than they should have been afforded, but at what cost. Respect the hustle....I guess?
