10 Bands Destroyed By "Selling Out"

10. Maroon 5

If you look up ‘selling out’ in the dictionary, you’d probably find a picture of Adam Levine singing Payphone on the US version of The Voice with Wiz Khalifa back in 2012. Specific, I know. The song, the setting, and the accompaniment were a sure sign of just how far Maroon 5’s star had risen over the course of the decade prior, but that meteoric ascension had definitely come at the expense of their credibility.

The band’s debut effort, Songs About Jane, was a funk-infused masterclass in indie pop songwriting, and justifiably catapulted them into the charts and the public consciousness with one fell swoop.

Ever since then, however, it’s felt as if the group have been walking in ever decreasing circles, slowly moving away from the tropes and quirks that gave them their unique sound, and increasingly leading to material that literally sounds like everything else in whatever the zeitgeist genre is at that time. At this point it’s a matter of time before they release an emo-rap tune.

And that’s sad because, while their sound might not have been for everybody, at least it set them apart. The last thing we need is more battery farm music that has become homogenised in a desperate attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Adam and the boys might still be churning out the chart toppers, but at what cost?