At this point in the Hot 100’s history, streaming wasn’t yet a fact. Leading with a rhythm guitar part indebted to Kool and the Gang and Nile Rodgers and a kick drum, “Moves Like Jagger” has a will to power that many of the songs I’ve reviewed lacked it knows what it wants to be and is convinced the listener will succumb. Why it was a hit isn’t hard to judge, I suppose: it moves, although not quite like Jagger, and songs with whistled hooks are often manna. It was a smash in every country in the world. Added to later incarnations of the album, “Moves Like Jagger” was supposed to be a throwaway, a ditty co-written and co-produced by Benny Blanco, Ammar Malik, and Shellback. Then, like Natalie Merchant, Levine dropped any pretense that Maroon 5 were a band. For a while, Hands Over You looked like a flop. “For Levine,” I wrote, “caddishness and sensitive are interchangeable.”Įxhausted, Maroon 5 took several years off before he scared middle America with the cover of 2010’s Hands Over You. I was especially taken with “Kiwi,” a ridiculous erotic little skitter that makes more sense now that I’ve seen Call Me By Your Name and its peach scene. Never mind my grade: I didn’t mind It Won’t Be Soon Before Long when I reviewed it.
Maroon 5’s first #1 used the line “Kinda makes me wonder if I ever gave a fuck about you” and made the same fans of the early hits love it and gained new ones. Luckily, 2007’s “Makes Me Wonder,” which took that same lightest-of-mechanized-funk base for uptempo ends, compensated. He was more compelling playing a sleazebag. After an uncertain start, Songs About Jane took off after “Maneater” rewrite “This Love” became ubiquitous in 2004, followed by “She Will Be Loved,” the real menace.ĭespite the white R&B ballad structure offered by his mates, Levine wasn’t cut out for projecting chocolate box sentiments. PEAK CHART POSITION: #1 in September 2011.Ī painted gecko who fancies himself an Alpine Drive satyr, Adam Levine began in the skate punk band Kara’s Flowers before discovering the financial possibilities of the wobbly, bran-cured falsetto.