It would be great if Pacquiao was also in frame…
[Video][Website]
[4.33]
Katherine St Asaph: Maroon 5, the fuckers, always release one single per album I want to douse myself in bees for liking. Last time it was “Give a Little More,” before that it was “Makes Me Wonder,” and then “She Will Be Loved” (though there I plead teenagerdom and a crush.) Now it’s even less defensible, a garish extrusion of Swedish tattoo-reggae that sounds equally like Ace of Base (continually influential somehow) and the sound of a clarinet preset dead inside — i.e. Adam Levine, of course; love, lust, angst and even resignation register equally inhuman. Maybe it’s a stealth cry for help; a Levine lyric like “I’ll be waking up in the morning probably hating myself, and I’ll be waking up feeling satisfied but guilty as hell” on track one of his Shellback cash-in has got to be, right? Maybe I just like “All That She Wants” so much I’ll also like its plastic knockoffs. Maybe I don’t actually hate Maroon 5. I’ll only stay with them one more album.
[7]
Will Adams: “Marginally less annoying than ‘Payphone'” really shouldn’t be the criterion for deciding which set of schwas you want to foist onto the public.
[3]
Alfred Soto: “We go hard at each other like we’re going to war” would have sounded licky as trips when Adam Levine wasn’t singing from the top of his vocal range as he increasingly has since realizing that being a multinational threat means pretending the rest of his band was a bad dream. Now he needs them more than ever; there simply isn’t enough going on besides that vocal.
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: Once upon a time Adam Levine had a Princely yowl. Today the highest he sets his sights is on whatever his last single was.
[4]
Brad Shoup: So Levine’s gone full Mutt on his bandmates, and it took that defeated skank guitar to tip me off eight singles too late. The bounce and melody of the “ooo” hook compels me toward Kaiser Chiefs’ “Oh My God”; to be fair, that’s kind of my default state. I’ve never warmed to the can’t-quit-you song, but if you can’t fake the fuck, I can’t lend you one of mine.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: New faux-reggae packaging, same Adam Levine taste.
[3]
Kat Stevens: There’s Ace of Base cod-reggae and then there’s UB40 cod-reggae — I’m staggered that this wasn’t immediately rejected and palmed off to Olly Murs! Video = hilarious though.
[3]
Anthony Easton: For lyrics so desperate and so violent, the song is manic but not conflicted — the music itself is actually really fun, in a sweaty dancey kind of way. The juxtapositon between those has been done to death since the beginning of time, but it’s an effective trope and Levine et al uses it much better than most.
[8]
Ramzi Awn: One more minute of this and I might need to finish off that bottle of wine after all. Maroon 5 does not disappoint in its entirely convincing portrayal of an American sound evolution gone batshit crazy. And that’s giving it way too much credit. With vocals as energizing as a “Jersey Shore” conversation and a lifeless beat to boot, the perfect time for “One More Night” would be the end of a party, when you need to get everyone out.
[2]