Musical Style and Influences
Maroon 5 has cited Michael Jackson, The Police, Talking Heads, Aaliyah, Oasis, Shabba Ranks, and Prince as influences. Frontman Adam Levine has also cited Stevie Wonder as one of his heroes. Maroon 5's songs tend to be very guitar-heavy, often accompanied by piano or synthesizer. The theme in all of their songs is love, frequently lost love; songs like "This Love", "Makes Me Wonder", and "Misery" have a very cynical tone, often expressing dissatisfaction with a relationship, while their more heartfelt and emotional songs such as "She Will Be Loved","Never Gonna Leave This Bed" express a longing for a romantic relationship. "Makes Me Wonder" has a secondary theme in which Levine expresses his disillusionment and frustration with the state of American politics and the Iraq War.
Maroon 5's sound changes from album to album. Songs About Jane consists of songs about Levine's ex-girlfriend Jane. On It Won't Be Soon Before Long, however, the songs are less personal, and are more electric with more use of synthesizers, creating a retro feel. Hands All Over continues the band's lost love theme, along with songs about infatuation, and was re-released with the song "Moves Like Jagger", an electropop song featuring Christina Aguilera which represents a drastic change in the band's sound, with more of a dance feel to it. "It was one of those songs that was definitely a risk," Levine said. "It's a bold statement. We've never really released a song like that. But it's exciting to do something different, do something new. I'm just glad that everyone likes it." When announcing their fourth album, Overexposed, Valentine called the album "our most 'pop' record ever and we weren’t shy about really going for it."
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Famous quotes containing the words musical, style and/or influences:
“Through man, and woman, and sea, and star,
Saw the dance of nature forward far;
Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times,
Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I concluded that I was skilled, however poorly, at only one thing: marriage. And so I set about the business of selling myself and two children to some unsuspecting man who might think me a desirable second-hand mate, a man of good means and disposition willing to support another man’s children in some semblance of the style to which they were accustomed. My heart was not in the chase, but I was tired and there was no alternative. I could not afford freedom.”
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“Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)