Review Summary: Welcome to the jungle, motherfucker
In one corner, a zebra. A jaguar, standing majestically in the center of a garden that is lush as fuck. I mean look at all those colors. In the other corner, a parental advisory sticker because this contains rap and bad words. Yup, you've stumbled into the wrong place - it's the Walmart™ music section. Welcome to the jungle, motherfucker.
The Walmart music section is one of the worst places I've been in my entire life. First of all, with CDs becoming a dead product, it's now limited to one or two shelves, and it only ever features the most egregious country artists alongside pop music so insipid that even descriptors like "adult alternative" are far too sophisticated. Ignoring the important question of how I ended up there, I was amazed to be standing in front of a new Maroon 5 album in 2021. Someone who smelled vaguely like gym socks and sausage, adorned in a confederate flag T-shirt, cut in front of me to grab a copy. I thought to myself, "pussy", but then I realized I said it aloud. I coughed afterwards to cover it up and I think he bought it because he mosied off to the hunting/fishing section. I immediately regretted not owning up to it.
That was only the second most embarrassing encounter I had that day. Far worse was letting my morbid curiosity get the better of me and actually listening to
Jordi. Now, you don't
need me to tell you this album is terrible for you to know that it is, which is a testament to Maroon 5's ineptitude for the past decade. Even while keeping that in mind, this is worse than whatever you're imagining. Let that sink in for a moment, then continue reading.
"At this point, we've made it", Adam Levine told Apple Music in an exclusive interview - "We're not trying to do anything to make it any further." Apparently, the pinnacle of artistic integrity as defined by Levine is writing eleven straight ballads in which he alternates between his trademark falsetto and sounding like a soundcloud rapper, then bringing in a slew of hip-hop guest spots: Megan Thee Stallion, Nipsey Hussle, YG, Juice WRLD [RIP] and...Stevie Nicks? The best parts of the album come when Levine sticks to singing, and even then it sounds like he's hell-bent on sounding like Sting. You could make a case that
Jordi's greatest quality is the artwork, because in a discography that includes a girl with 4 arms having an orgasm, a purple monkey vomiting while surrounded by Simpsons characters, and a giant neon "V" (for their fifth album, no less!), this actually isn't the worst album cover we've seen from them.
The music, however, is a total throwaway. Every song layers Levine's singing/clumsy rapping over the most cringe inducing trap beats, and most of the time he sounds like a middle-aged stepdad trying to sound "hip" to get in good with his stepson. It's transparent cultural and trend pandering, and even when Levine adheres to his bread and butter, the melodies are more vanilla than usual and the lyrics range from "Nah-nah-nah, in my bed / Makin' beautiful mistakes" to "In a strip club tryna get all the pretty girls to dance / Yeah, yeah, yeah, huh / I remember back in high school, they said I wouldn't stand a chance." Even though Maroon 5 have long been staples of grocery-store-core,
Jordi might have driven them from even
that very sad niche thanks to its questionable lyrics. In an ongoing battle between the likes of The Script, Train, OneRepublic, and Maroon 5 for the worst pop band in existence,
Jordi could be the ace card that sees these guys take home that figurative prize. Take a bow, Mr. Levine.
