10 Hated Rock Bands With One Amazing Album
8. Songs About Jane - Maroon 5
The Maroon 5 that has chart success these days is far from the same band that we got to know back in the day. Even though it might call itself the brand name, this is now the Adam Levine Experience and don't any of you forget it. As much as the urge to sell out was too alluring for Levine to pass up, it's not like they were lacking in talent on their early work or anything.
If anything, Songs About Jane is the textbook definition of how to toe the line between pop and rock correctly, with songs that have a radio friendly sheen but more of an attention on guitars. Hell, if all you know about Maroon 5 are songs like Memories or Moves Like Jagger, something like Harder to Breathe might catch you off guard on first listen, being dominated by a lot rougher edge (for Maroon 5 at least).
As the tracks play out, there are also some great moments where Levine flexes his chops as a vocalist, like the mellow Sunday Morning or the almost funk heavy stuff like Not Coming Home. Compared to the horrors that we've seen for the past decade of Maroon 5's existence, this is the kind of mellow rock that was actually fairly competent at the time. If anything, this makes Levine's modern output look a lot worse. When you were on a show literally called the Voice, where the hell has this kind of voice of yours been all this time?