Maroon 5

Pop rock band from Los Angeles named Maroon 5 has released their sixth studio album on November 3rd, 2017. Red Pill Blues is the name of their new album which consists of fifteen songs and one remix featuring Cardi B in their greatest song from this album Girls Like You. So, the album name sounds really interesting! It refers to a popular cultural meme, a metaphor which represents the choice between a red pill and a blue pill. Red pill represents 'a life of harsh knowledge, desperate freedom, and the brutal truths of reality' and blue pill represents 'a life of luxurious security, tranquil happiness, and the blissful ignorance of the harsh realities of life, basking in an (essentially dishonest) illusion.' When you mix terms of the red pill and blue pill you get Red Pill Blues. There's a story that they got the idea for the name of the album from a movie called "The Matrix" filmed in 1999. Maroon 5 is a band of originally four members and now they have seven members: lead vocalist Adam Levine, keyboardist and rhythm guitarist Jesse Carmichael, bassist Mickey Madden, lead guitarist James Valentine, drummer Matt Flynn, keyboardist PJ Morton, and multi-instrumentalist Sam Farrar.

Maroon 5 is a music rock pop band that began in the early 2000’s. The group began making waves almost as soon as the group was created. This move was headed by their single “harder to breathe”. The group has kept growing stronger, although one or two persons have been replaced, the group has stayed strong producing beautiful music for all the world to enjoy. Friday the 13th is a recording of a live performance by the group (live album). Very little is known about what inspired the name of the album, some might be of the opinion that it is related to the day the album was recorded, which was on the 13th day of May, 2005. Or probably, it is something deeper, maybe something more personal. The album name was not referenced in the lyrics of the song so as to give us a little clue about the motive behind the name. Anyone that is willing to solve this puzzle will have to go to the artistes themselves. The album consists of a total of fourteen songs. The pop album is characterized by deeply insightful lyrics, classic beats and excellent vocals by Adam Levine, Jesse Carmicheal and Ryan Dusick. The songs are awesome but they do not really stick to the minds of listeners, the lyrics are extremely catchy but they just seem to have over stayed their welcome in the minds of men. The songs that really thrilled me from the album are "Through With You", "Wasted Years" and "She Will Be Loved". Contrary to the whole rock pop album, the songs are actually calm and soothing to the nerves.

The world consists of approximately seven billion people, each of them with different views and taste when it comes to music. That is probably why what may be considered as a hit by one group might be regarded as noise by others. Maroon 5 is a rock band that emerged in the early 2000’s. Their first hit album Songs About Jane was a major hit. Consequently, quite a number of live albums consisting different songs from the album were released in the years that followed. One of such albums is 1.22.03. 1.22.03 is an acoustic version of a few of the hit singles from the above mentioned album. The live album also includes two cover tracks by the band.

Sometimes my favorite band releases an album where I ambivalent towards the singles they and their record company decide to release. It happens from time to time and it certainly happened when Maroon 5 released the follow-up to their excellent debut album, Songs About Jane. I admit I was a bit crestfallen, because although the band broke new ground in their sophomore effort by finally scoring a #1 hit in the US charts with “Make Me Wonder”, none of the songs the band released as singles appealed to me at the same level that “Harder to Breathe” or “This Love” did. All their four releases (“Make Me Wonder”, “If I Never See Your Face Again”, “Wake Up Call”, and “Won’t Go Home Without You’) were solid songs and it was great that the band was continuing in their evolution as artists, but none of them made me rave about the album. Unfortunately, these four songs were arranged like this in the album, #1, #2, #4 and the #5 track. Since I wasn’t really into them, I usually would not bother to listen to the rest of the album anymore and just change the CD on the rack. So for a long time, I wasn’t familiar with the second half of this album. It was only after I did a review of Songs About Jane did I start playing I Won’t be Soon Before Long again, mainly to assess if my personal biases at that time have persisted almost 12 years after I bought the CD. Well, I still feel ambivalent about the four songs released as singles from this album. However, I was wrong about giving up on the album at that time. I discovered that there were several good songs in the second half of the album. I think they were not chosen because they were not pop enough and I think that was the direction the band was aiming for at that time.