Review Summary: The sound of giving up
Maroon 5 are such a frustrating anomaly. A self-described "LA rock band playing soulful R&B pop music", their unique and original concept was the impetus for their quick ascent in the pop landscape. They refused to fill a lane in a transitory time before you could really get away with not doing so.
Songs About Jane had so much swagger, strut and attitude that you couldn't help but root for them, even if Adam Levine's mostly toxic persona served as the protagonist. He was a dick, but he knew it, and he didn't pretend to be something he wasn't. Better yet, he (and the band) still tried to explore interesting topics. "Makes Me Wonder" was a pop rock masterstroke in part because of its disillusionment. With love, with politics (perhaps a subtle nod to Bush-era anti-jingoism), Levine is searching desperately for "something to believe in, cause I don't believe in you anymore." It'd make you share in his cynicism a bit more if the song wasn't so God damn fun. And that's the Maroon 5 paradox; clever songwriting, well-oiled pop production, and everything but the kitchen sink to draw from. So
why the f*ck did they decide to jettison all of that potential in favor of almost-offensively putrid electropop monotony?
The band was on collision course with obscurity after 2010's
Hands All Over, which sucks, but that's how the industry works. Stars come and go to define their eras, before giving way to the next crop of leading figures, unless you're hell-bent on maintaining your power (see late 10s Taylor Swift for more). Maroon 5 were the latter, and you know the rest of the story by now; "Moves Like Jagger" thrust them back to the top of the charts, and they sold their souls to stay there. So while
Overexposed and even
V weren't atrocious albums, they failed to land anywhere in the ballpark of
Songs About Jane. They'd supplemented their catalog with a few more hits while neutering the compositions with a decreasing presence of live instruments, but 2017's
Red Pill Blues is where they officially lost the plot.
Red Pill Blues does not play like an album created by a band with seven(!) members in it. It sounds like the hate-child of a self-absorbed, unbothered solo star in disguise, and an
Avengers: Endgame-sized arsenal of producers and songwriters. It was also around this time that Adam Levine publicly declared rock music as "nowhere" and that "all" innovative music was occurring in hip-hop. This prompted a reply from Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor, whose band, interestingly enough, has more number-one albums than Maroon 5!!! Suffice to say, this record lacks even the scant bit of redeeming qualities its two predecessors had. Having run both the album cover, and the music itself, through Snapchat filters, Levine brays vacantly into the void on opener "Best 4 U," which has a simple enough concept; a relationship doomed to fail because the guy needs to work on himself. But there's no resolution, no growth. Levine runs in circles and seemingly refuses to take any ideas to their logical conclusions.
From there, we skim through the painful club anthem wannabe "What Lovers Do", consisting of basic beats, a useless SZA feature, and a hook that is almost as insistent on assaulting consciousness as a song like the Black Eyed Peas' 2009 war crime "I Gotta Feeling." Hot on its heels is "Wait", limping in on James Valentine's guitar riffs, which have been shredded to oblivion on the grid. They quickly fall into the background, allowing another slate of tired snap beats to lay at the fore of the composition. Valentine also gets a chance to pluck a little bit on "Bet My Heart." This one would be a bit more innocuous if Levine wasn't trying the vocal equivalent of blackface to compensate for his deteriorating abilities. It's also our last look at the "band" themselves before we're treated to onslaught of features from some of late 10s hip-hop's most in-demand B-listers; Future, LunchMoney Lewis, and everyone's favorite: Cardi B.
Cardi's inclusion on the deluxe re-issue brings us to "Girls Like You," one of the biggest nothing burgers of a smash hit in recent memory. Armed to the teeth with empty platitudes, laughably bad vocals from Adam, and Cardi's worst flows on record, this
dominated pop and AC radio for
eighteen months, if you need an idea of how far from grace the mainstream pop zeitgeist had fallen at this point. The full band stops in for a cameo on the closing cut, titled (get this) "Closure", which clocks in at
eleven and a half minutes and represents almost a third of the album's runtime. This is really nothing more than just an elongated jam session to satiate those of us who are still convinced the real band was Epstein'd and replaced by robots, but it is undoubtedly a cool payoff after the torment we've endured, and a fleeting glimpse at what Maroon 5 once was, and still could be if they so chose.
Red Pill Blues is the soundtrack of a group of has-beens trying to keep up with the times by any means necessary. Completely devoid of any of their former soul and personality, they chase trends at every turn, and overdose on Walmart Great-Value beats, flaccid production, and lyrical tropes so cheesy, it'll make any milk lover lactose intolerant. This album can only conceivably be enjoyed by someone with no discernible modicum of critical thought or cynical eye. And that's exactly who Maroon 5 decided to pander to when they put this out. The worst part? Adam Levine declared this album the "cousin" and companion album to
Songs About Jane. I can't find the words to describe how infuriating that is. Yes, both albums rely on relationship commentary, but they are so fundamentally different from each other. When I listen to
Jane, I see lost love, flawed people trying to come back to each other because they don't know anything else. When I listen to
Blues, I see nothing but an emotionally and intellectually incurious protag attempting to relate to his muse without even trying to scratch the surface.
Hope is not lost, though. At the time of this retrospective writing, the band has announced that their forthcoming eighth studio album will mark a return to band-oriented performances and writing; Levine has even proclaimed he's shafting his longtime pool of outside writers, and keeping things squarely within the band. That's great news, but God damn it, why did they have to release four sh*tty albums before deciding to do that again?
