JORDI – Maroon 5

Released: June 11th, 2021

Today’s throwback thursday features an underrated and critically underacclaimed album. What a mean hook right. With only two hits by Maroon 5, i present to you five years since the birth of the JORDI album. This album had a sick lineup of features. Blackbear, Stevie Nicks, Megan Thee Stallion, and even H.E.R. So the question is, why is it such a flop? Well we are going to tell you.

It started off strong with “Beautiful Mistakes,” the very catchy and automatic pop formulaic hit. Simple rhymes to describe sexual encounters describing them as a “broken home,” something that is familiar and comforting but wrong. The message is simple: you are bad for me but I want you back and I miss the trouble we used to make together. Hitting that cliche “nah-nah-nah” after each chorus reminder. We even have Megan Thee Stallion weighing in here as the female perspective. She displays feminine empowerment by her flow reminding this man that: I am better than you and I am not coming back. Don’t you forget it.

So now, let’s move to the second track where it all went wrong. “Lost” is a choppy and melodine filled message that tells us Adam Levine was sad and lost until a woman came into his life and started loving him. The chorus couldve really benefited from some Pentatonix style harmonies instead of those siren sounding echos. There is not much lyrical context to the song besides what I have already mentioned. We step into “Echo” with a feature from the “hot girl bummer” star Blackbear. Another cliche sound of overproduction and high pitched manly tones. The mistake here is the continuation of an attempt at that electronic pop sound after Red Pill Blues when they should have went back to rock. Telling us that he has an echo in replacement of his heart just isn’t really doing it for the audience. Adam Levine is so talented and throwing these effects all over his voice isn’t the best look.

We come back down a bit to the original Maroon 5 sound in “Lovesick.” Since this track is a few songs deep into the album it can be easily overlooked. Although the lyrics in this one again aren’t that deep, it is a little better. The essential theme being obsessed with a lover to the point where you are sick to your stomach and loving the feeling. Moving away from love stories we dive into “Remedy” featuring Stevie Nicks. The message of this one is finding excuses and solutions to bad feelings in life. Although Stevie Nicks is iconic, I do not believe this blend of voices makes much sense. We have the classic rasp of Stevie’s voice blended with an autotuned Maroon 5. The ending theme here being that the best remedy and the greatest weakness is love.

A mesh of weak vocal stims of the word “weekend” leads us into a pretty random rapping portion. There is no feature on this track which is concerning because Maroon 5 should not rap. It just kind of sounds like a tacky trap song. If it wasn’t Maroon 5 that released this one you would think it was written by a highschool Soundcloud rapper. The next track “One Light” features a relatively small artist Bantu and is more of the same. Telling us when he is with the one he loves he sees her clearly and on a pedestal. She keeps him going and is the center of his world. Bantu enters the song with a weird “Ooh-wee.” Unfortunately this was a place he could get some recognition and blew it on “ooh-wee.”

We feel some synth in “Convince Me Otherwise” with H.E.R. The smart idea was to let H.E.R open up the track. It differentiates between all the similar sounding tracks enough to keep me listening. She is begging for a sign to stay. The song acts as a back and forth conversation between a couple, both begging each other to “Convince me otherwise” of why not to leave. They both feel drawn to each other and cannot bring themselves to abandon the other. The song ends with not much of a resolution but it is decent compared to the rest of the tracks that have unfortunately blended together.

The churchy sounding organ brings us into a semi-hit “Nobody’s Love.” He is pledging all of his love to her. Saying that “If my love ain’t your love / It’s never gonna be nobody’s love” this promises her that if she didn’t accept his affection he wouldn’t want to give it to anyone else. He only craves what she can give and has no interest in anyone else. The one before the big one, “Can’t Leave You Alone” featuring Juice WRLD, is another cliche song about the pain of love. For the fifth time he says he needs some novocaine to make himself feel better from being apart from her. He seems to have devoted all his love and energy to her but she is unclear about the way she feels. She has trouble opening up. The whiney voice and choppy lyrics don’t do it any favors either.

Ending on “Memories” we have an obvious hit and Maroon 5’s more classic feel. The only track where you can clearly hear Adam’s voice. A nice relatable song about missing those that are not with us anymore and a celebration of the ones that are still with us. We reflect on the terrors of the world and the hate that circulates but an urge to carry on for those that couldn’t. A light and somber but positive message to leave us with a better impression and a new bat mitzvah montage classic.