Maroon 5
LOS ANGELES -- Adam Levine knows the game.
Seconds after sitting down for an interview and before any questions are asked, the Maroon 5 frontman playfully rattles off canned responses he has used in recent months while promoting The Voice and the band's fourth album.
"It is our poppiest record ever. We're really embracing the pop side. Christina [Aguilera] and I are all good. We don't fight," he says brightly. "I feel great about this record! Probably our best ever!"
He lets out a stagey, fake chuckle, and it's clear that the 33-year-old Los Angeles native both relishes the spotlight and has been around long enough to grow a smidge tired of its glare.
Thus the title of the album, Overexposed, which finds the five-man group at its commercial peak 10 years after its debut, Songs About Jane. Last year's stand-alone single, Moves Like Jagger, featuring the aforementioned Aguilera, stayed at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 for a month. Overexposed's lead single, Payphone, is now in the top five.
Levine and guitarist James Valentine spoke with The Associated Press in a recording studio about Maroon 5's "identity issues," educating young fans and why Levine doesn't plan to go solo.
1 Why Overexposed as an album title?
Levine: We thought we would just kind of say it before everybody else did.... My face is on buses, which is a trip, and it's weird.... The Jagger tune propelled us into the stratosphere even more, combined with the show and a lot of things that are happening right now.
2 And do the songs address that as well?
Levine: They're love songs, and they're songs about dysfunction but also songs about having a good time. I used to have to be miserable to write a song. And that's kind of gone away.... But we also have the moments that I think are just speaking more universally.... It's not shrouded in too much metaphor and ambiguity and poetry.
3 Your 14-year-old fans likely don't understand what a pay phone is, though.
Levine: Pay phones and Mick Jagger could be considered things that some kids don't know about. I think that actually if you did some sort of poll, you'd say: 'What's a pay phone? Who is Mick Jagger?' I think you'd be shocked by how similar the responses were from that particular demographic.
Valentine: We're like history teachers!
4 Do you feel there was a pre- Jagger Maroon 5 and a post- Jagger Maroon 5?
Valentine: Definitely. Jagger sort of laid down a blueprint for what we're going to do next. We were definitely due for a change, and I think we were definitely going to go in some new directions, but [with] the success of Jagger, of course we're going to try doing some more stuff like that.
5 Adam, could you see yourself going solo and then coming back to the band?
Levine: No. And I know I say this and 'famous last words,' but being a solo artist is so painfully uncool. I always loved playing music with my friends.... To be a solo artist, I'm just not interested. I never have been. I'd sooner start another band.
-- Ryan Pearson, The Associated Press
