Ah, ’Beautiful Mistakes’ seems like the perfect title to describe everything Maroon 5 have been putting out for the past couple of years. With a few mega and well deserved hits like ‘What Lovers Do’, ‘Girls Like You’ and ‘Memories’ filtered through, the rest of their new material has been majorly average at best. The spark behind their albums ‘Songs About Jane’, ‘It Won’t Be Soon Before Long’, and ‘Overexposed’ seems to have disappeared, and now they are just making lacklustre and predictable pop music.
At this stage they no longer sound like Maroon 5, and instead it just feels like an Adam Levine solo project which is ironic because he recently made a statement how there are no bands anymore, and that is highly incorrect. The fact of the matter is that Maroon 5 are just not a “real” band anymore, and instead are living in this very corporate pop world and are bringing in high profile rappers to feature on tracks to guarantee radio and online traction.
For this average pop song they’ve enlisted Megan Thee Stallion whose verse is the ultimate peak moment of the track. Otherwise this song just doesn’t go anywhere new or exciting compared to their previous releases. It’s sonically in the same soundscape as ‘Nobody’s Love’, ‘Memories’, and ‘Girls Like You’, and they haven’t really ventured further out of that. There’s no band structure to these songs, and they’re all just synth layered with Levine’s vocals glued over the top. It’s a forgettable track that will probably get a lot of radio play, but does it really deserve it? If it was any other band or artist would it get the same spotlight? The answer is no.