POV: You’ve just told Adam Levine what you think of his new song…
[Video][Website]
[2.56]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Maroon 5 has put out some lazy hooks in the past couple years, but this one is downright indecipherable. The lyrics hints at a love story, the video hints at the song being about marijuana activism, and Adam Levine himself has stated that the song is for everyone, even specifically naming frontline workers and social justice activists. Accordingly, “Nobody’s Love” ends up being simultaneously about everything and nothing at once — and is dreadfully uninteresting through it all.
[2]
Alfred Soto: “Inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests” my ass. Another dumb ditty to which nine co-writers contributed apart from Adam Levine. TikTok is supposed to destroy this shit.
[0]
Katherine St Asaph: Are we sure this wasn’t made by OpenAI Jukebox?
[3]
Alex Clifton: Pro-tip: the production on your song should not make you sound like something out of The Californians!!!
[2]
Will Adams: Checklist: half of a corkscrew melody recycled from “Wait”; scraps of vocal squiggles left over from “Sorry”; compost of the past few years of inoffensive soft-rock piffle that Charlie Puth et al. have churned out. This is a landfill of yesteryear radio pop. Given this, I understand Adam Levine’s desire to make “Nobody’s Love” feel relevant. But dedicating it to frontline workers and social justice when the lyrics have zilch to do about either ain’t it.
[4]
Tobi Tella: I mean, Jesus Christ, guys. I know expecting passion from late game Maroon 5 is a losing game, but why is this so painfully basic? It’s supposed to be a dramatic declaration of love song, but is it really? Do you think these lyrics took longer than an hour to right before being focus grouped to sand off the interesting parts? And who cares? It’s hard for a band to be actively unengaging, but I don’t think anyone, including those who made it think it needs to exist.
[0]
Nortey Dowuona: This song is like Captain America movies: completely and utterly worthless, dull as dishwater and misusing the very talented black man within it, and only lames who gave up on Iron Man: Armored Adventures after the first season will like it.
[2]
Scott Mildenhall: It’s Maroon 5, so proceed with a caution that they too often do not. Zone out of the verses, attenuated in the manner of a rapper younger than “This Love” and punctuated with vowels that only Adam Levine can reach, and instead bask in the equally guileless, ’80s end-credits uplift. Yes, he did just rhyme “pocket” with “psychotic” and “lock it” with “unlock it”, but just be grateful that that — along with adding emotional blackmail to his love-as-possession repertoire — is all he did.
[5]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The most tolerable Maroon 5 has been in a decade. It’s not due to Adam Levine becoming a better singer two decades into his career, or the songwriting getting any more clever, but instead due to “Nobody’s Love”‘s deep blandness. Where 2010s Maroon 5 stuffed their songs full of eye-catchingly bad ideas, the musical equivalents of snapchat filters, on “Nobody’s Love” they instead elect to simply ascend to their true vocation, as the prophecy of Songs About Jane foretold: the world’s biggest, most competent purveyors of elevator music. And it’s just fine.
[5]