Featuring a star-studded lineup, Maroon 5’s ‘Jordi’ is an album that sets out to be impressive from the get-go. Certainly, it doesn’t disappoint at surface level, but scratch a little deeper and you’ll find things are a little more tangled than they initially appear.
From humble soft-rock beginnings to mainstream pop domination, Maroon 5 have steadily climbed the rungs since the release of their 2002 debut ‘Songs About Jane’. Yet, with the same blend of mind-numbingly-melodic music underpinning ‘Jordi’ a feeling of tedium has washed up at their feet.
After all these years, Maroon 5 are still masters of mass consumption radio anthems, these days served with a side of appearances from relevant artists of the moment.
Track-by-track, ‘Jordi’ plays like a band reeling off one single after the next, each surely as promising as its predecessor. But as the album rolls forward, they blur into one mass—there are only a few real “wow” moments, for reasons both good and bad.
Opener Beautiful Mistakes is the best song here. Featuring Megan Thee Stallion, it ticks all the boxes as flirtatious lyrics are laced with Maroon 5’s usual foolproof themes of lustful nights and doomed romantic relationships. Not to mention the addictive arrangement, which just screams summer soundtrack.
Echo (featuring Blackbear) and Can’t Leave You Alone (featuring Juice Wrld) are also keepers and ‘Jordi’, named for the band’s late manager Jordan Feldstein, soars during its high points. But the knock on effect is that it becomes even harder to ignore tracks that fall painfully short of what we would love to hear from Maroon 5.
Losing lustre with the Auto-Tuned tackiness of Remedy, which does a great disservice to Stevie Nicks, ‘Jordi’ reaches a low with Levine’s cringe-inducing attempts at rapping on the neighbouring Seasons. Skip, without question. In fact, cherry-pick the soon-to-be summer bops and consider swerving the rest.
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