Each Music Monday will be formatted as followed: an overview/ my opinion on their said career, followed by the ranking of their top 5 songs. No artist is without flaws, their worst three songs will also be judged and ripped to shreds.
As a reminder, this is not going to be a series where I list no-name songs off an artist’s shitty second album that’ll you’ll hear occasionally in an urban coffee shop. We only grade hits here. I’m not looking for songs that have the best underlying message. I’m not looking for songs that represent the artist’s struggle and triumph over something shitty that happened to them. I don’t care about any of that. We are only ranking the cream of the crop, the pinnacle of an artist’s success. Before you ask, I will not be ranking The Beatles’ songs, as I do not want to tarnish my blog with overrated garbage. If you have a problem with that, or my rankings, and want to make your criticisms known, you can email all of your concerns to VinnieWontCheckThis@gmail.com. Prior versions of this series can be found here.
So with that, let’s get started.
Maroon 5 is a pop rock band (I have to bold the word ‘pop’ because Wikipedia has the audacity to call them a rock band. If you call Adam Levine and Friends a rock band I’m calling the police) that was born formed in 1994 in Las Angeles, California when a couple of the members were in high school. They were your normal high school band who stunk and—- Full disclosure, I was going to bypass the 7 year period where Maroon 5 was just your typical shitty high school band but upon reading how they got big and whatnot, the story is cool and interesting enough to talk about, so let’s start this over.
Despite being formed by high school friends the band saw no success whatsoever. They decided to go to college. When the split apart to go to different colleges one of the members (I’m not learning anyone’s name other than Adam Levine. From this point going forward, every member of this band that isn’t named Adam Levine will he called ‘Not Adam Levine-1, Not Adam Levine-2, Not Adam Levine-3, etc.) broke his wrist and shoulder in a tragic accident and had to leave the band because he couldn’t play guitar anymore. The band had to scramble to find a new guitarist and that’s how ‘Not-Adam Levine 2’ was brought into the band. The band immediately had a different sound with this presence and ended up recording the album that would become Songs About Jane in 2002. It was good great but didn’t get much attention at first. By a stroke of luck, ‘Not Adam Levine-2’ happened to go to college and was roommates with an artist by the name of John Mayer. John was doing what any friend wouldn’t do and actually supported the group and listened to the album. He loved what he heard and invited them to open up for him on his tour. So let’s recap, without ‘Not Adam Levine-1’ breaking his wrist and shoulder they never recruit ‘Not Adam Levine-2’ who doesn’t give them the John Mayer exposure that launched them to superstardom.
Songs About Jane becomes a hit and spawned two top 5 hits (This Love, She Will Be Loved) and another top 20 song (Harder to Breathe). Adam Levine and Friends earn a Grammy in 2005 for “Best New Artist” for their troubles, despite releasing their debut album 3 years prior, I don’t understand how that happens but whatever; this section is going to be long enough. Their follow-up album It Won’t Be Soon Before Long was released in 2007 and gave the band their first number one hit (Makes Me Wonder), as well as a song that hit the top 20 (Wake Up Call). They put out Hands All Over in 2010 and the album looked to be a huge STINKER with a capital S if Adam Levine didn’t become a judge for The Voice and had to record a song BANGER with fellow judge Christina Aguilera to promote the show (Moves Like Jagger). The song became such a hit they decided to try again and release the same album one year later in 2011, with this song included on it. The subsequent single managed to hit number 15 on the charts because of it (Misery). Still riding the wave of success from this banger, they released Overexposed in 2012. The album was successful in terms of getting songs on the chart, as the four singles went number 1 (One More Night), 2 (Payphone), 7 (Daylight), and 10 (Love Somebody). Another album, V, came out in 2014, to nothing but love and support from their parents. It was meh. In my opinion, after Overexposed, they got worse and worse. Don’t get me wrong, V has hits which peaked 6 (Maps), 3 (Animals), and 2 (Sugar) on the charts but it felt different. I get reinventing your sound so you don’t get stale but It feels like they tried to recreate the wheel too much with this. Their greatest hits album came right after that and they released a trash album in 2017 that I’m not even going to bother to name but just know it had songs go 6 (Don’t Wanna Know), 16 (Cold), 9 (What Lovers Do), and 1 (Girls Like You).
Great! Let’s rank their hits, that overview took forever to get through, holy smokes.
5. She Will Be Loved: This song is pretty much Stacy’s Mom but more sensual.
4. Harder to Breathe– Maroon 5 gets mixed reactions if you ask people their opinion on the group, and I understand that; they’ve gotten safe, they know how to milk the cash cow and make top 10 hits, HOWEVER, if you can sit there with a straight face and tell me this song doesn’t absolutely bop, then you’re lying to me, and more importantly yourself.
3. Makes Me Wonder: the song is a TUNE. I truly believe if Adam Levine and Company follows Songs About Jane up with any other song they lose the momentum they built up and then who knows what happens. Imagine if Maroon 5 made a funk album, oh boy, I’d be all way back in on them.
2. This Love: I cannot believe this thing is 15 years old now. We have crossed the terrain of it going from a bop to a jam. I remember where I was when I heard this song: it was at an ice rink for a girl’s 10th birthday, and I had a crush on her. I felt like a music video trying to catch up to her while we were skating endlessly in a circle, and what does she do? Fucking hold hands with David. Heartless bitch.
1. Moves Like Jagger (with Christina Aguilera): I really cannot put into words how unbelievable this song is. To me, this list was more or less a ranking of songs 2-5, because I had this puppy locked into the top spot the second I decided to rank Maroon 5. A fantastic song overall, change my mind, you can’t.
I like Maroon 5 a lot! I can’t hate any group that gave me a song as meaningful to me as Moves Like Jagger, They have a ton of hits (I don’t know why I always say they have a ton of hits, of course they do, every artist that I do in these rankings always have to have a minimum of 5 hits for this entire blog to exist BUT THE POINT STANDS) and always seem to get a lot of flack for no reason. However, I gotta level with you, they have some songs that make you go P.U. And while I’ve given a couple of artists a pass on their stinkers, I need to say something about this.
2. Daylight: if the question is “does Maroon 5 make bad music?” The answer to the question is Daylight. P.U.
1. Girls Like You (ft. Cardi B🤢): This is the worst. This is an abomination that this song is as successful as it was. What a terrible song. I cannot voice my displeasure enough that this thing was made. I hate ending the post on a sour note because Maroon 5 does have hits but this is a perfect 10 on the STINKER scale.
Your Turn
If you had a blog and were to rank every Maroon 5 song that hit top 20 on the charts, what are your top 5?
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | Album |
| Harder to Breathe | 2002 | 18 | Songs About Jane |
| This Love | 2004 | 5 | Songs About Jane |
| She Will Be Loved | 2004 | 5 | Songs About Jane |
| Makes Me Wonder | 2007 | 1 | It Won’t Be Soon Before Long |
| Wake Up Call | 2007 | 19 | It Won’t Be Soon Before Long |
| Misery | 2010 | 14 | Hands All Over |
| Moves Like Jagger (ft. Xtina) | 2011 | 1 | Hands All Over |
| Payphone | 2012 | 2 | Overexposed |
| One More Night | 2012 | 1 | Overexposed |
| Daylight | 2012 | 7 | Overexposed |
| Love Somebody | 2013 | 10 | Overexposed |
| Maps | 2014 | 6 | V |
| Animals | 2014 | 3 | V |
| Sugar | 2014 | 2 | V |
| Don’t Wanna Know (ft. Kendrick Lamar) | 2016 | 6 | Red Pill Blues |
| Cold (ft. Future) | 2017 | 16 | Red Pill Blues |
| What Lovers Do (ft. SZA) | 2017 | 9 | Red Pill Blues |
| Girls Like You (ft. Cardi B) | 2018 | 1 | Red Pill Blues |
Vin'sane Thoughts 