First things first: auto-tune should be effing illegal. If I want to listen to someone singing like a freaking robot, I\u2019ll put on an old Kraftwerk album.<\/p>\n
If only that were the extent of the problems with Overexposed<\/i>, the fourth studio album\u2014well, kinda sorta, you\u2019ll see\u2014from once-upon-a-time neo-soul prodigies Maroon 5. Back in 2002, this quintet came along with a fresh sound\u2014poppy to be sure, but full of the groove and genuine emotion evidenced on early hits like \u201cHarder To Breathe\u201d and \u201cShe Will Be Loved.\u201d Frontman Adam Levine in particular had an outstanding voice capable of swerving effortlessly between a pleasant tenor and a soaring falsetto.<\/p>\n
As the years have worn on, though, the band has begun to founder. First founding drummer Ryan Dusick left, then Levine distanced himself from the group a bit by joining the panel of American Idol<\/i> knockoff The Voice<\/i>. Most recently founding keyboardist Jesse Carmichael, co-composer with Levine of the bulk of the group\u2019s songbook up until now, took a leave of absence for this album. <\/p>\n
This album which, in the final analysis, isn\u2019t really a Maroon 5 album at all, but rather an Adam Levine solo disc. It\u2019s hard to come to any other conclusion after listening to a series of tracks where everyone in the group other than Levine is barely present. \u201cOne More Night\u201d and \u201cPayphone\u201d might feature solid beats and a certain shiny appeal\u2014marred in the latter case by a head-shaking amount of entirely gratuitous profanity\u2014but these songs have virtually nothing to do with Maroon 5. They\u2019re densely produced synth-pop numbers populated with drum machines and programming, devoid of any of the sharp ensemble playing the group manifested on earlier albums, and in fact bereft of the very things that made Maroon 5 appealing in the first place: soul, emotion, sincerity.<\/p>\n
His voice auto-tuned just shy of Alvin the Chipmunk territory, Levine for much of this album literally sounds like he\u2019s singing through a circuit board. On most of these tracks it\u2019s impossible to even detect an organic instrument or voice; it\u2019s heavily processed electronic drums plus densely layered synthesizers plus heavily processed vocals equals 100 percent sheen. <\/p>\n
Even when you can detect (barely) actual non-synthesized instruments, as on the driving \u201cLucky Strike,\u201d there isn\u2019t a single note that hasn\u2019t been tweaked to death by a computer. \u201cThe Man Who Never Lied\u201d is worse yet, a paint-by-numbers songwriting crapfest with less originality than your average used car commercial. (By this point I was taking careful notes on the thundering herds of co-writers and producers deployed on these tracks to make sure I never purchase another album on which they are featured.) <\/p>\n
When M5 finally do step off the dance floor and away from the auto-tune, it\u2019s for a limp, forgettable piano ballad aptly named \u201cSad.\u201d Even that awkward respite is a brief one, though; the next two tracks are pure formula songwriting, piling the \u201cenough of dancing in this club, let\u2019s go home and get busy\u201d clich\u00e9s to the ceiling. At least closer \u201cBeautiful Goodbye\u201d isn\u2019t another formulaic dance tune; it\u2019s simply an innocuous, lightweight pop ballad with all the substance of a snowflake.<\/p>\n
Overexposed<\/i> is the first album on which Maroon 5 sounds more like a brand than a band\u2014just another faceless, homogenized, computerized, plasticized pop machine. Ten years ago, Adam Levine was a terrific white-soul singer with a hot band and a promising debut album under his belt.\u00a0Ten years from now, he’ll be that cheesy “Moves Like Jagger” guy who used to be on The Voice<\/i>.\u00a0Apparently he thinks that’s trading up. \u201cSad,\u201d indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":31002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7018],"rating":[11203],"class_list":["post-42685","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-maroon-5","rating-rating-d-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42685"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}