Review Summary: Magnum opus, swan song, and promising debut all in one.
"What happened?"
An absurdly apt, melancholic sentiment shared by pretty much... anyone that compares Maroon 5's original work to, like, even a nanosecond of their newest material. What... happened? What happened? Surely, there has to be some kind of explanation as to *why* Maroon 5 fell from "promising, weirdly funky upstarts" to "conveyor belt music". They must have been replaced by robots, right? The original members of Maroon 5 were murdered at some undefined point in the late 2000's, and replaced by lookalike, soundalike androids that were able to emulate everything superficial about the band. That's a narrative I can get behind - that's a narrative that actually doesn't depress me. It's a story I'd much sooner believe than the sad, material reality of the situation... which is that Maroon 5, simply put, stopped. They stopped giving a damn, they stopped caring, and they more or less stopped existing, instead transforming themselves into a barely-sentient hit machine that just pumps out notes, chords, and faint melodies that may occasionally strike you as 'music' if you listen close enough. Maroon 5's music these days is little more than retail-core, the kind of filler you hear in Goodwills, Sears stores, JCPenneys, and grocery stores, white-noise *stuff* that bleeds out of the speakers to make family trips a little less awkward. Were it not for how weirdly distinctive Adam Levine's increasingly-robotic voice actually is, you probably wouldn't even be able to identify the music as "Maroon 5". You could slap any other vocalist onto their garbage and it wouldn't lose any of its "Maroon 5 identity", because that implies the pre-existence of actual identity and feeling.
They are dead. Maroon 5 is a band of zombies. Here's the crucial thing about what I just said: being 'dead' implies that, at one point, you were alive. And the sad truth is that Maroon 5, at one point, were a band of promising, weirdly funky upstarts, a band that wrote one of the best 2000's pop records and, frankly, one of the most impressive *debuts* we've ever heard. Is Songs About Jane fine art? Does it belong in a museum? No. But is Songs About Jane 45 minutes of well-composed, snappy, and energetic pop & funk rock? Hell yeah, my man, Songs About Jane unironically slaps and you're an insecure little bitch baby if you think it doesn't. "Harder to Breathe" is a hell of an opener, hitting you in the face with some punchy-ass snares before launching into a simple but chunky, steady riff that oozes with confident swagger and a breathy, claustrophobic chorus that exudes a strange amount of sex appeal, sex appeal that's absolutely nowhere to be found in the hiccup-y hooks of something like "Girls Like You" or the tryhard, fake-Soundcloud vibe of "Beautiful Mistakes". By contrast, "Harder to Breathe" is a firecracker of personality, the kind of guilty-pleasure pop song you *proudly* sing in your car instead of mumbling along to banal, disposable bull*** like 'and da memories bring back memories bring back yuuu'. "This Love", the crown jewel of the record, follows in the same vein as "Harder to Breathe", swapping out the chunky, distorted power chords with funky, dramatic, syncopated 7ths on a piano that dance around a rising and falling chromatic guitar riff, creating a dramatic, almost musical number-esque atmosphere that explodes into an infectious, staccato chorus that just beckons you to shout along. At this point in time, Maroon 5 is a band with *confidence*, with strong musical ideas and strong hooks and a strong stage presence. "Harder to Breathe" and "This Love" are pop masterpieces, and if the whole album was made of cocky, sexy funk-rock songs like these, "Not Coming Home", and the low-down, crooning "Tangled", I think I'd still be impressed.
But the best thing about Songs About Jane is that it's almost... experimental at parts. Some of the best songs on this record are downright *strange* territory for pop music. "Shiver" has the best buildup on the entire record, dominated by an exotic riff that brings to mind 'Middle Eastern Funk Rock', rising and growing in tension until it utterly explodes into a screaming boiling pot of multi-layered guitars and Adam Levine's almost chant-like hook at the end. The bouncy swing rhythms in "The Sun" have a strong, surprisingly authentic RnB vibe that brings to mind Craig David's "Walkin' Away", and that's before it completely subverts our expectations and adds psychedelic, flanger-heavy guitar parts and twelve-string guitars that ooze the feeling of a hazy, hot summer day with screeching cars and hot asphalt. The bossa nova-like pianos, shimmering organs, and bluesy bass grooves present in "Sunday Morning" are likewise a surprising twist, and yet it works *beautifully*, especially when all of these discrete, complimentary parts dance in harmony during the swelling chorus. The few times when the album takes a break and lapse into thoughtful, quiet contemplation also work surprisingly well - "She Will Be Loved" is a simple-but-gorgeous ballad, with a rainy, somewhat lo-fi vibe; the humming bass, muted guitar, and crispy cymbals & stick-taps slide perfectly into the more melodic, arpeggiated chorus where Levine's falsetto and the ringing, clean guitars bring to mind a perfectly cheesy, romantic scene between you and the girl you love in the middle of the pouring rain. And then there's "Secret", perhaps the most interesting track on this entire record, a surprisingly dark and moody track that opens with this sinister, ambient wall of theremin-like synths and string-section pads that fade out and give way to a slow-burning, chunky guitar and sparse, wintry piano notes eventually accentuated by dark, growling bass and the crisp cymbals-and-sticks that floated through "She Will Be Loved", recontextualized into something darker and sexier. "Secret" is easily one of the best cuts on this record, a sinister-yet-sleek groove that breaks out of the usual pop-music mold and tries something different. Every single song is ear candy, and both the band and producers deserve the utmost credit for making something so colorful and eclectic.
Even the lowest moments on this album have a shocking amount of color and character - I honestly wouldn't say there's a single bad song present here in Songs About Jane, just songs that happen to be weaker than the numerous standouts surrounding them. "Through With You" sounds a little too much like "Harder to Breathe" to start, but as the song progresses, it starts adding a lot of flamboyant, winding bombast that winds up eventually separating it from its seemingly-similar predecessor. On that same note, the Sade-esque blend of acoustic arpeggios and harmonic synths present in the first half of "Sweetest Goodbye" feel more hokey and trite than the chromatic, funky, bouncy finale when the entire band just brings it all home in one grandiose, explosive gesture. The melodic, flowery, Tom Petty-esque pop rock that defines most of "Must Get Out" is pretty and summery, if admittedly a little uninteresting even if it has one of Levine's best vocal performances. "Not Coming Home" is probably the "worst" song on the record; it *actually* sounds too much like "Harder to Breathe" (the chorus is just a Michael Jackson-y take on almost the exact same melody), and unlike "Through With You" which merely uses the template set by "Harder to Breathe" to burst into something altogether different in its flavorful second half, "Not Coming Home" just kind of meanders and shuffles around a fine but somewhat unengaging static groove for the better part of three-four minutes.
But I think it's really telling when even the worst song on this record is *miles* above even some of Maroon 5's 'better' future cuts. Take the bland, basic-bitch dance beat present in "Moves Like Jagger" or the trite, milquetoast balladry that is "Payphone" - sure, they're leagues ahead of songs like "Girls Like You", songs that don't even qualify as music, but they can't even compare to the musicianship present in thirty seconds of "Not Coming Home". Songs About Jane is good. It's really, really good... and its quality is a tragedy, because this qualifies as both Maroon 5's magnum opus and their swan song all at once. After this, very quickly after this in fact, Maroon 5 began their steady descent into by-the-book, trend-chaser, movie-trailer pop, a fall from grace that they've never quite recovered from. It could be that they blew all of their good ideas on this record and whatever they pumped out as Kara's Flowers... but I think the truth is somewhere in a much hazier middle. I think a mixture of record-label demands and the band's desire to maintain their momentum in the music industry led to them making music that would keep them on the charts... and in the process, they lost all of the heart and soul they poured into this record, the heart and soul that put them on the map to start with. There's a certain special something present in Songs About Jane that makes it so delightfully infectious. It's more than just well-constructed pop - it's interesting, it's passionate, it's simple yet weirdly intricate, it's the sound of talented, ambitious young dudes with a hunger in their belly and a swagger in their step. At the time, they were some of the funkiest white guys on the scene, a term you'd *never* associate with any of them in this current era of robot-stepdad Maroon 5. Songs About Jane is a burst of pop-music ingenuity... and it's simultaneously a product of a bygone era, Maroon 5's lone sentinel of quality. It's been almost twenty years since the release of Jane, and Maroon 5 has never come even *remotely* close to capturing even half of the stylish, theatrical, passionate energy that made this such a killer of a debut. It may have been lightning in a bottle, but it was electrifying all the same, and it's some of pop music's best comfort food as a result. It doesn't just remind you of the good old days - it reminds you of the days when *they* were good.
