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Maroon 5 At a time when the concept of artist development has all but disappeared from the music business, along comes Maroon 5 to dramatically demonstrate just how much talent plus time plus effort can accomplish. Over the course of the last three years, the L.A.-based quintet has gone from touring in a van to headlining arenas while selling millions of copies of their debut album, Songs About Jane, on a remarkable extended run that even now shows no signs of slowing down.
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In recent months, the breakthrough album has yielded a
pair of chart-topping singles. One of them, “This Love,” earned Maroon 5 a
Best New Artist at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards; the other, “She Will Be
Loved,” received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or
Group with Vocal (the band was also nominated for Best New Artist). The two
smashes dominated the Modern AC, Hot AC and Adult Top 40 charts for over 10
weeks in 2004. You can't turn on the radio these days without hearing Maroon 5,
and that's obviously part of the reason Songs About Jane is
triple-platinum in the U.S. while racking up another 3 million units in the
rest of the world, but there's more to this success story than radio spins. The point is, those 6 million albums didn't get rung up
overnight, far from it. Indeed, Songs About Jane could be described as
the anti-blockbuster. The album was released in June of 2002, and it didn't
enter Billboard's Top 200 chart until nearly a year later. The exponential
growth in popularity was due, in part, to their indie label Octone’s
aggressive marketing plan, but also and for the most part, the band's willingness
and drive to cultivate a fan base of their own. The band's job required putting themselves in front of
people, and that they did, night after night, week after week, month after
month, winning new fans one by one, face to face. They hit the road in early
2002, not behind the album, as they say, but nearly a half year before its
release, and they haven't stopped yet. “We spent a full year traveling the
States in a 15-passenger van before graduating to our first tour bus a little
ways into 2003,” lead singer Adam Levine recalls. “To us, getting that bus
was huge.” The crowds grew incrementally as Maroon 5 traversed the country.
They did their first headlining tour in the fall of 2003 before hooking up with
John Mayer for a summer shed tour, which turned out to be one of 2004's
highest-grossing packages. Then they returned to Japan and the U.K. for a fall
headlining swing. During this extended campaign, they've also performed on
virtually every TV show that features musical guests, including Saturday Night
Live, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,
Ellen, The Today Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Last Call With Carson Daly and The
Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn and many others. Relentless touring only bears fruit when the music makes a
lasting impression, and Maroon 5 had the benefit of one of the strongest
collections of songs to appear in this half decade. Those songs didn't come
overnight, either, nor did the band's seductive soul-rock sound. Levine, guitarist Jesse Carmichael, bassist Mickey Madden
and drummer Ryan Dusick formed the band Kara's Flowers when all but Dusick,
who's two years older, were still going to high school in West L.A. In 1996,
after they'd outgrown grunge and moved on to power pop, the quartet landed a
record deal with Reprise, which released their album during senior year for
three of the members. Although the record, The Fourth World (recently
reissued by Reprise), helped Kara's Flowers expand its rabid local following,
it failed to attract national attention, and, somewhat disillusioned, the
bandmembers opted for college. Dusick and Madden enrolled at UCLA, while Levine
and Carmichael headed to Long Island, N.Y., where they spent a semester at the
music school Five Towns College. Due to the African-American music influences at their
respective schools, the band evolved both musically and lyrically. Levine
started singing differently, Carmichael switched to keyboards and guitarist
Jesse Valentine was added, bringing the lineup to five pieces. The renamed
Maroon 5 had its creative breakthrough in 2000, when they wrote and recorded a
set of demos that clearly defined their new R&B-based rock direction. With
its muscular new sound and a brace of captivating songs, Maroon 5 quickly
attracted attention from labels. Octone, whose staff was blown away by the
band's unique blend of styles, signed the group in a joint venture deal with J
Records, and in late 2001, Maroon 5 entered the studio with producer Matt
Wallace Most of the material that wound up on the album was
directly inspired by Levine's tumultuous relationship with his ex-girlfriend;
“We were breaking up as the band entered the studio,” he explains. “After
compiling a song list, we decided to name the album Songs About Jane because it
felt like the most honest statement we could make with the title.” Is there a
more potent combination than a breakup song with a killer hook and a phat
groove? It's no wonder Maroon 5's music has connected so deeply with music
lovers. As they crisscrossed the country in their van during the first months of the campaign, the urgent rocker “Harder to Breathe,” which had been chosen as the first single, provided the band with added momentum, eventually charting at Modern Rock in the top five of forty. “She Will Be Loved” and “This Love” then rocketed them into the stratosphere. “Sunday Morning” is the fourth and latest single, and the scary thing is, there's more where that came from. In 2004 the band took time out from its busy schedule to record tracks for the Spiderman II soundtrack and a Sly Stone Tribute album. And one of these days, when their perpetual tour finally comes to an end, Maroon 5 will begin work on a second album that probably won't take a year to make the chart. But let's not get ahead of ourselves; following the Grammies, the band will embark on an eight-week tour of the U.S., indicating that things are far from over for Songs About Jane. |
