Maroon 5 Maps writeup for 2014 top 100

"I'm following the map that leads to you" sings Adam Levine in the hook of the opening song of Maroon 5's 5th studio album, *V*. The map, I assume, is pointing him towards some DMs that look very slidable. When you're as popular and egotistic as Adam Levine, everyone's DMs look very open to potential sliding. Probably. And you don't even need to pick and choose your words! Well, poor word choice would be more about the next song on *V*,  "Animals". No matter. *V*. It's the Roman numeral for 5. . . . . An apt name for your fifth studio album, especially when your band is five people. Not everyone would pick up on Levine's nuances. We're ignoring that Maroon 5 were six people in 2014. Their keyboardist left them in 2012 to study healing magic, was quickly replaced (very important that Maroon 5 are five people! They have an image to uphold). Then he returned to the band in 2014. Healing magic couldn't heal his bank account I presume. So the Maroon 5 behind *V* was a six-member band. False advertising. Not that it mattered. "Maps" was written by Adam Levine, Ryan Tedder, Benny Blanco, Ammar Malik and Noel Zancanella. For all intents and purposes, they are the new Maroon 5, and are actually a quintet! Max Martin was the executive producer of the album, returning from Maroon 5's last album *Overexposed* which gave us the #1 hit "One More Night". The new Maroon 5, or 6 if you include Max Martin, was an unavoidable pop radio hitmaking machine.

Some miss the old Maroon 5. The band Maroon 5. Me? No way. To me, "She Will Be Loved" belongs in the realm of Jason Mraz and Train-like soft pop balladry. Harmless, but I wouldn't say I like it. "This Love"? A fun bop, to be sure, but it is not really that special of a song. *Songs About Jane* was released in 2002, on the day I turned 1 years old, but for all pop purposes, it is a 2004 album. Its album success was mostly after a rerelease in 2003, and those songs I mentioned were both released as singles and charted in 2004. 10 years after, our new Maroon 5, Adam Levine and A-list producers Maroon 5, release their album *V*. The band is nothing alike, besides Adam Levine's annoying tendency to try to hit high high notes for a living. *V* gave us five singles. Not 4, not 6, 5. V. Only III of them ended up really mattering: if you add up the streaming numbers for the remaining nine songs on the album, they don't make up half the numbers of the big three. There is "Sugar", a song so wedding-core that the band recognized it: for the music video, they crash people's weddings to play the song. HORRIFYING STUFF. There is "Animals", a song so disturbing that it loops back to being amazing. Levine cosplays 2009 Shakira and awoos all over the place. It's camp. And there is "Maps". Unlike the other two, I don't think most people utterly despise "Maps". There is a semblance of a story in the lyrics, a semblance of a cool music video, basically enough artistry involved in it to make people think that the project Maroon 5 still has some merit to existing. Maroon 5 is not MAGIC! At least not yet. I really couldn't care less. "Maps" is good because it has hooks for days. It starts out a bit limp, with a very basic drum pattern and a guitar melody that sounds too thin accompanying Levine's crooning. The drumming picks up, especially in the pre-chorus, hinting at the grand Max Martin chorus that has become his signature. The guitar melody returns just as thin, but in the chorus that doesn't matter anymore because the song all came together to do its job. But the magic happens, as Levine sings "Soo I'm following the map that leads to you", transitioning into the post-chorus with even more momentum. Following following following. The ride does not slow down until it is over. The bridge cheats and rehashes the pre-chorus. On one hand, it is uncreative. On the other hand, I like the pre-chorus. The final chorus packs a bit more punch, engineered just right to capture the charts. Following following following.

2014-2016 is a very interesting era of pop to me, because it feels like the last bastion of radio oriented pop songwriting before Spotify truly took over. And Maroon 5 carved themselves into the legacy of early 2010s pop in a way few other acts have managed. They still had a couple more hits in them later, such as "Girls Like You" and "Memories". Let's just say I wouldn't be enthusiastic about a writeup on those. Neither would I be enthusiastic about a writeup on "This Love". For better or worse, this is the Maroon 5 I grew up with, and "Maps" is one of the best songs this Maroon 5 did. I don't think I'm particularly nostalgic for it. I'm only nostalgic for "Racecar Veigar". "Maps," however, is just a damn good pop song. And I guess enough of us agreed, so it's on the list. I think it's at like #73.