>Gallery links:
The Sun
“IT’S our first number one in the UK – holy s*** balls!”
Anyone who saw Adam Levine’s tweet last week, about new single Payphone hitting the top spot, was in no doubt how excited the Maroon 5 frontman was.
He explains to SFTW: “I wasn’t aware that this was our first No1.
“I knew we’d had success in the UK but I wasn’t sure to what degree.
“So it’s exciting and feels good. I’m told we were No1 by miles and we knocked Cheryl Cole off the top, too — sorry about that.”
LA native Adam, 33, and Maroon 5 are in New York for a week of promotion in the run-up to the release of their fourth album, Overexposed, including an appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman and a day of talking at Soho’s Mercer hotel.
Sat in a corner of the hotel restaurant, in a brightly coloured shirt that shows off his heavily tattooed arms, the waitresses flirt when they serve his lunch, while other guests gape at the heart-throb singer who is also a mentor on the US version of The Voice. And it’s a more mellow Adam than SFTW first met, in 2007, who was difficult and aloof.
He jokes that his reputation of being an “asshole” has been replaced by a less prickly Adam.
He explains: “People often misinterpreted confidence or my playful cockiness with arrogance.
“I’m certainly an extremely humble person and my mother raised me right. I’m always polite, I’m always nice and never mean.
“And I’m excited, so excited to talk about the new record as I see it as a rebirth for Maroon 5.
“We’re energised. We’d gotten complacent but everything changed when we put out Jagger.” Moves Like Jagger, their huge duet with Christina Aguilera released last June, was a No1 in 18 countries and a No2 in the UK, kept off the top spot by Rihanna’s We Found Love. It was also the second biggest selling UK single of 2001.
Adam says: “That changed the whole game for us. It introduced us to a younger generation of fans who we connected with. It got everyone up dancing and it proved we were still in the game.”
Adam admits that initially he thought the song was a “risk”.
He explains: “It’s a polarising song — a bit audacious and cocky. I didn’t know how people were going to respond to it. They were going to love it or hate it.”
As it turned out, the song saw a change in fortune for Maroon 5, the band who formed in 1995 at Brentwood School in Los Angeles under the name of Kara’s Flowers.
Adam says he struggled with critics who gave Maroon 5, and him in particular, a hard time.
He says: “I put my heart and soul into our songs and love them, so when someone writes they don’t like them or me, it hurt.
“But the ups and downs have been really important. And now I don’t know why it’s working, but it seems to be, so I keep doing it.
“Now it’s OK to like us. For ages it was uncool to like Maroon 5.” As a good-looking man who is rarely without a supermodel on his arm, is it just that he simply gets up people’s noses, I ask?
Adam laughs: “It’s funny because all of that is hard for me to understand. In my mind, I’m a dork.
“I’m a nerdy guy and I love music. I don’t consider myself to be cool. I have days of having low self-esteem like the average person.
“So it’s funny that people have that perception because it’s just so far from the truth but it’s good that our music is getting played everywhere again.
“In the past I struggled to gauge what the perception of Maroon 5 was. But I don’t think that exists any more.
“I don’t think the negative stigma or the guilty pleasure aspect is attached to our band any more.
“It seems that if you stick around long enough, people gradually accept you. And it’s been ten years since we put out our first album, Songs About Jane, so we are here, we’re not going anywhere and people have got used to us.”
Overexposed is Maroon 5’s poppiest album. After opening the doors to outside songwriters on Moves Like Jagger, the band — whose songs in the past were mainly created by Adam and guitarist James Valentine — recruited Britney Spears and Robyn producer and songwriter Max Martin as the executive producer.
Adam says: “It was Gwen Stefani’s first solo record Love. Angel. Music. Baby. that made me first think about it.
“She’s amazing and had that fearless approach to recording with all of the best people in the business. And her record was incredible, because she had the courage to step outside her comfort zone.
“So we said, ‘Why not try something completely different that could totally radicalise the idea of who we are?’ And I think Max Martin is an absolute genius.
“I took him aside and asked him if he would be executive producer. There aren’t many guys out there who can write amazing music but also who people respect enough to allow to be at the helm of the operation.”
Next single, One More Night, is a reggae-tinged number that is upbeat and set to be a summer hit.
Adam says: “One More Night was a Shellback and Max Martin creation. The second I heard it I was like, ‘I’ve got to be on this as it’s incredible.’
“It’s so much more exciting to have a hit song when the hit song is refreshing to hear, not just another silly pop song.
“Payphone was a lot more straightforward and Wiz Khalifa did an amazing job with the collaboration.
“It’s a lot of fun but it’s got a bit more attached to it than a song like Jagger, there’s a bit more depth. It’s not just a dance song.”
Adam says the poor sales of their 2010 album Hands All Over hit them hard and he felt the band may have split if it wasn’t for Moves Like Jagger.
He says: “We had high expectations for that third record. We have high expectations for anything we do. It fell short of our expectations initially.
“Overexposed has opened new doors for us.”
The band are famous for their songs about heartache and loss. Their 2002 multi-platinum debut Songs About Jane was written after Adam got his heart broken by a girl he met at a petrol station. Overexposed includes their trademark tear-jerkers in the emotive Beautiful Goodbye, Sad and Love Somebody, which was inspired by Adam’s recent break-up with Victoria’s Secret model Anne Vyalitsyna after two years together.
Adam — who is now dating another Victoria’s Secret model, Behati Prinsloo — says: “We could never put out a Maroon 5 record without the love songs as that’s why we connect so well with our fans. We have fun, yes, but we speak about things we’ve all been through at some time.”
Adam is also looking forward to returning to the US version of The Voice, which has been renewed for a third season.
As a mentor alongside Christina Aguilera and Cee-Lo Green, Adam says: “The Voice was a huge risk. It could have winded up being a huge train wreck but it wasn’t. It was an inspiring, amazing and wildly successful show.
“Being on the show was a dream, like it was for the contestants. It was exciting to give back a little piece of myself. Sharing the knowledge and the things that I’ve gone through with these kids was right with the world. We gave them a chance to succeed.
“I never thought I’d be much of a coach, but it turns out that I really enjoy helping guide these guys to where they need to go.
“As for the UK Voice, well, I love Tom Jones. I think it was a really good choice. I’d like to see someone like Chris Martin on there next, although I don’t know if he would do it.”
With Maroon 5’s keyboard player Jesse Carmichael announcing in March he was taking time out from the band to focus more on his studies of music and “spiritual healing”, how has his departure affected the band?
Adam says: “It’s been interesting. It’s been a journey, let’s put it that way.
“It’s hard to be in a band with somebody for 20 years and then they up and leave.
“But he’s been doing this his whole life. He wanted to explore other things and I completely respect that. We have a totally open-door policy and if and when he decides to return he’s welcome.”
Since Moves Like Jagger and appearing on The Voice, Adam is now very much in the public eye, meaning the world knew about his break-up with Anne.
He says:
“I don’t read anything about that, but it takes a lot of adjustment.
“I’m not really used to all this tension stuff and it’s a bit sequestered at times. But you know, I just go with the flow.
“Relationships don’t work out and I know I’ve sacrificed my personal life a lot because of this band. But I hope one day to settle down and have a family.
“I think that I’m going to work really hard, keep my head down, and go for it right now.
“And who knows? In a few years, it could be a whole different longing.”
Overexposed is out now.
Source: thesun.co.uk
>
