Bashing Maroon5 for their pervasively sexual lyrics is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. It's one of those things that hardly comes as a surprise to anyone, based on this vaguely ubran funk/rock outfit who hit it big circa 2004 with the album Songs About Jane and its hit singles "This Love" and "She Will Be Loved", complete with their envelope-pushing steamy videos. If I were to pick up their long-awaited second album and gripe that the lyrics were too explicit, most fans of the band would be like, "Well, duh. Weren't you paying attention the first time around?" Taking the heavy-handed moral approach doesn't work well when reviewing an album by an artist whose fans are probably more or less accepting of the artist's past output. It only serves to give existing nay-sayers more fuel for the fire. Given that I didn't have any major beefs with the sexual content of Songs About Jane (I even got criticized by one reader for not taking issue with it), it would be hypocritical for me to start throwing stones at the band for that now. Hey, I'm a guy. I don't really approve of "thinking with the other head", but I've been guilty of doing it at times, so I can sort of relate. And what I found about the band in the past was that they had a good amount of "I'm sorry" and "I'm not taking this abuse any more, even if the sex is good" to balance out the "Wow, you're hot and I want you, even if I don't know your name" sort of stuff. I enjoyed that album a good deal, and still do. I liked its semi-organic take on a genre normally dominated by your Justin Timberlake types. Give me some solid instrumentation that isn't just the result of producers playing around with their laptops, and I can get into nearly any sub-genre of rock or pop music.

But then along came It Won't Be Soon Before Long, and suddenly I thought, "Whew, is it getting hot in here or is it just you, Adam Levine?" Because this album takes the steaminess to a whole other level, while funking up the music a good deal more with greater involvement on the part of the keyboards and synths, and it's like a double whammy. The music, while still a lot of fun on several tracks, feels a bit more processed this time around, and these lyrics? I'm no prude, but seriously... Too. Much. Information. You want to sing about getting some, that's fine with me - I've been listening to Dave Matthews and John Mayer do that at least once per album for several years now. But when it's all about bragging on your own sexual prowess and blatantly dehumanizing the very person you want to do it with? That's when I have trouble staying with you. I can handle sex. I can't handle unbridled chauvinism.

Of course, this band's minefield of a sophomore album isn't without its romantic charms - a few of the mellower tracks tend toward the apologetic, even if in the end it's really all about Adam finding a way to let one woman down easy so he can move on to his next fantasy in the next tune. (And I'm not about to assume that all of these songs are necessarily the way that he or any band member feels, especially given one track where the protagonist commits a heinous crime and shows absolutely no remorse for it, but all the same, he does seem to have a bit of a fixation.) If the previous album was all about Jane, the ups and downs of their relationship, the times when the sex was good and the times when she was a total nympho to the point of wearing him out, or just using it to keep him around, etc., then this album might as well be called Songs About Adam Levine Getting Laid. Because the goal here, more or less, seems to be to get you naked by the end of this guitar riff, and from there on, it's mostly "Wham, bam, get the hell out of here, ma'am."

If I Never See Your Face Again
It makes you burn to learn you're not the only one
I'll let you be if you put down your blazing gun...
You'll recognize the Maroon5 sound that we came to love during the previous album almost instantly as James Valentine gets the staccato guitar riffs started up, but you'll also immediately recognized the somewhat smoothed-over sound thanks to the buzzing synthesized sound emanating from Jesse Carmichael's keyboards. The band still puts the exclamation marks where they're needed, though, with an urgent synth note between each line of Adam's sassy verses, or the jazzy background vocals echoing "right behind you" in a way that sounds off key at first, but really isn't. It's a very flirtatious sound, but in a teasing sort of way, as if to indicate to a former lover, "You had your chance and you blew it, so now you get to weatch from afar and know you can't have me". And that's more or less appropriate for a song that is best summed up by the last two lines of the chorus: "If I never see your face again, I don't mind/'Cause we've gone much further than I thought we'd get tonight". So basically, he's already made his way around the bases back to home plate, and he's ready to move on to the next ballpark, if you know what I mean. And yet there's a part of him that's bothered by the fact that she's with another guy, so maybe he's just taunting her to see if she'll put in the effort to win him back. It's confusing, and more than a bit spiteful, but somewhere underneath it all you get the vague idea that he still cares about her while insisting out loud that he doesn't.

Makes Me Wonder
Feels so good to be bad
Not worth the aftermath, after that
After that, try to get you back...
Speaking of spiteful, this second track (and a gutsy move to put out as a lead single, since it contains the album's only use of strong profanity) is just downright nasty. You can practically picture the disco ball spinning over the band's head as the vintage guitar riffs and the mean low-end synths do their little dance with each other, and it's all great fun until you pay attention to the words, which basically accuse a woman of being a big fat liar, and admitting to becoming totally bored with her due to not knowing where she stands - "It really makes me wonder if I ever gave a f*ck about you." Dude, that's harsh. It's really too bad, because the band pulls off one of their slickest musical hooks when that harsh setup takes us seamlessly into the smooth plea of the chorus: "Give me something to believe in, 'cause I don't believe in you, any more, any more." And there's a nice little change-up when the bridge uses that same trick to bring us back for the final chorus, but delays it for another line of lyrics or two. These guys know how to play off of what the ear expects and derive an addictive pop hook from it, so it's too bad that their lyrics have gotten so vindictive this time around.

Little of Your Time
We are just passionate lovers with trouble under the covers
Nothing worse than when you know that it's over...
Now here's a quick little blast of a song that knows how to have some pure, unbridled fun for a couple minutes and then get the hell out of the way. It comes slamming in with the dual attack of acoustic and electric guitars, leaving the acoustics to get banged around in between a rhythm that's all but guaranteed to start an instant party with its rapid shimmy-shimmy-shake-shake. The lyrics fly by, and it doesn't fully register that Adam's trying to win back the affections of someone who thinks he's grown cold to her by promising her a steamy romantic interlude, and thankfully the most detail he goes into is the slightly cheesy line, "Please don't leave, stay in bed, touch my body instead". Combine that sort of attitude with the little keyboard loop that pops up during the chorus, which is a beyond-obvious reference to Outkast's "Hey Ya" - they're the second band to get away with ripping off that song within the space of a year (Robert Randolph and the Family Band being the first, at least that I'm aware of). It's all pretty much a guilty pleasure, but it's a genuinely thrilling two minutes and 15 seconds of musical ecstasy., right up to the abrupt ending.

Wake Up Call
I didn't hear what you were saying
I live on raw emotion, baby
I answer questions never, maybe
And I'm not kind if you betray me...
Now we're back to an even nastier mood than before, with a heavy dose of creepiness thrown in for good measure. This is one of those ominous songs where the synthesizers and the slinky rhythm feel like they're sneaking up on you, which is fitting, since it's all about a murder that was committed in a fit of jealousy. What's most striking here is the fact that Adam (to be crystal clear, the character being played by Adam in the song, since I doubt this really happened to him) shows little to no remorse after finding his lover in bed with another man, who apparently was tall and intimidating enough that he instantly decided than to shoot the guy in cold blood. The lyrics would more or less have you believe that he saw no other way out of the situation, even shrugging it off by saying, "I don't feel so bad". There might be a teeny bit of regret during the bridge when he starts to panic and wonder if the guy's still breathing, but one gets the feeling that he's worried about getting caught more than anything else. I don't like this song for the same reason that I don't like "Goodbye Earl" by the Dixie Chicks, though at least in that one, I could sort of sympathize with the protagonist. Here, I just think the protagonist is a selfish, paranoid a-hole with a bad case of trigger-happiness.

Won't Go Home Without You
Every night you cry yourself to sleep
Thinking "Why does this happen to me?
Why does every moment have to be so hard"...
Remember how "She Will Be Loved", despite the sweetness of Adam's soft crooning, felt like a bit more of a bland, vanilla pop moment in the midst of far more interesting musical moments on Songs About Jane? Well, at least I felt that way about it - maybe everyone else didn't, given its success as a single. Anyway, this one feels like Maroon5's attempt to recapture that vibe, as filtered through The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and Steve Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You", though all three are better songs, quite honestly. It's not that this one's bad, but it is a bit on the generic side - I hurt somebody, she cries herself to sleep, I'll never get over her, yada yada yada. I suppose it's nice to see more of a contrite attitude here, and perhaps this is the sense of remorse finally showing up after the events of the previous song, but there's nothing specific enough to tie it to any specific incident. As far as songs where a guy admits he's been a jerk and really hurt someone go, "Tangled" from the previous album was much more striking. This one'll play just fine on adult contemporary stations that wouldn't dream of messing with some of Maroon5's more adult-oriented material, but just because it's safe doesn't mean it's a highlight.

Nothing Lasts Forever
A bed that's warm with memories
Can heal us temporarily
The misbehaving only makes
The ditch between us so damn deep...
Now this is more like it - here's a song that gives us more of an intelligent take on a relationship gone sour, and trying to figure out who should take the blame for it. It's got a quick, fluid acoustic guitar line running throughout the entire thing, and for just a few minutes, Maroon5 brings back the more organic feel that worked for them the last time around without sounding like anything they've done before. OK, that's not entirely true, actually - Adam has repurposed the chorus that he contributed to Kanye West's sonmg "Heard 'em Say", filling in the gaps and turning what might have been more of a socially conscious lyric into more of a personal, relational one. It's interesting that the same words work in both contexts, not unlike Eminem sampling Dido, except that this time around the pop vocalist was a live participant and the actual pop song that the hip-hop song featured snippets of was completed later. It's a beautifully sad song that seems to be about learning to admit when two people have put up too many walls to effectively reconcile their relationship - you can try to ignore it and put band-aids on the wound with really hot sex or whatever else, but the reality of the situation doesn't go away, and perhaps the best way to love that person is to let them go. I could be cynical and say that this is really about weaseling one's way out of a relationship just to free up time to spend in someone else's bed, but just this one time, I don't think that I should fear the worst about Mr. Levine's intentions.

Can't Stop
All alone in my room, think of you at a rate that is truly alarming
I keep looping my memories of you in my head, I pretend that you want me...
Along comes another bouncy, sexy number that clearly wants to replay some of the same magic captured in "Little of Your Time", but that also serves as one of the two worst cases of "T.M.I." on this album. Adam's admitting to an unstoppable obsession with someone here, and I guess this is a pretty good example of the effect that sex has on the male psyche - give a guy something really good and then disappear on him, and chances are he'll find himself unable to concentrate on anything else. While I really do enjoy the flashy guitar chords that jump all over the place and the tricky rhythm, I find it impossible to get over the unintentional humor inherent in this song's lyrics, which are essentially saying, "Poor me, now I have to masturbate 'cause you won't give me any." The top two lines that never cease to amuse me in this song are as follows: (1) "I just wrestle with you in my dreams and wake up making love to my pillow" (So Adam, when's the last time you washed your linens? 'Cause that might explain why she doesn't want to sleep over any more), and (2) "I touch myself like it's somebody else" (A friend pointed out to me the myriad of confusing ways that this can be interpreted - So does the other person he imagines he's touching also have guy parts, or is he imaging that he has girly parts? On second thought, I really don't want to know.)

Goodnight, Goodnight
Her hair was pressed against her face
Her eyes were ran with anger
Enraged by things unsaid
And empty beds and bad behavior...
OK, time to take a break from the embarrassing sexual stuff so that we can instead listen to... an embarrassingly mushy ballad. Seriously, they should have known to throw this one right out the window as soon as they realized (a) it's not at all funky, and (b) Adam sings the word "Goodnight" like nine times in a row. It's all pretty with its shimmering piano and Adam's most sympathetic falsetto and all that, but you know what, I really hope that this one is about somebody's daughter. Because if you're going to apologize to a woman you're in love with by saying "I did not mean to hurt my little girl", then that might be a good indicator of the sick sort of relationship that you had with her in the first place. (On the other hand, I don't know if I could stomach a song that actually was about a father/daughter from Maroon5, since it's hard to get the notion out of my head that everything they do has a strong sexual undercurrent, so either way, this one's just a little creepy.) The fact that he then proceeds to rhyme "girl" with "world" just serves to earn the band a few more negative points on the songwriting scale.

Not Falling Apart
I try my hardest not to scream
I find my heart is growing weak
So leave your reasons on the bathroom sink...
OK, time to rip off The Police again. (For all I know, tons of bands have used that guitar sound heard in "Every Breath You Take" before and after the heyday of Sting's old band, but that's such an iconic song that I can't help but wonder if they noticed the similarities here.) Despite the obvious similarities, this turns out to be one of the album's better songs - I like how Adam goes from a calm, low tone of voice in the verses to a strong, soaring chorus, and the guitar work is pretty solid here even if we've veered back into straight-ahead pop/rock territory. It's another song about a guy having his mind stuck on a girl who walked out on him, which makes it somewhat generic, but at least the focus isn't so blatantly on sex this time - you can infer that he just misses her company if you like, since the lyrics are general enough to let you fill in the blanks. (I'm not so sure that's an advantage, but as far as the "less dangerous" songs on this album go, at least this one's more interesting to listen to than "Won't Go Home Without You".) I like the fact that he insists he's not falling apart while you can tell that he really is - the mood's consistent with a few of the other songs on the album, which find him trying to put up a front but revealing in the process that he can't fake it.

Kiwi
I wanna give you something better
Than anything you've ever had
A stronger and a faster lover
The world will disappear so fast...
The band develops a serious Prince fetish during this song and just runs with it, throwing all caution to the wind. Trust me, you're never going to think of that fuzzy green fruit the same way again after hearing this song (or people from New Zealand, for that matter), because Adam has turned it into a semi-graphic metaphor for going down on a girl. This one might steal the show from "Can't Stop" in terms of being the most embarrassing track on the album, and you know what, I'm not so immature that I can't handle a song about a memorable sexual encounter, but leaving certain details to the mind of the listener and playing it with a little respect and reverence for the person you're so intimately involved with goes a long way. (See the Dave Matthews Band's "Crush", possibly my favorite "sexy song" of all time.) All I get from Adam's promises to be "A stronger and a faster lover", his desire to feel "your juices dripping down my chin" and the ultra-cheesy female voice echoing his various desires back to him, is a few nervous chuckles. Because it's really not about her in the end - it's about having the bragging rights for racking up a high score on the orgasm-meter. A shame, too, because there's this kick-@$$ breakdown at the end of the song that comes as a total surprise - a sudden onslaught of snarling electric guitar goodness.

Better that We Break
A fool to let you slip away
I chase you just to hear you say
You're scared, and that you think that I'm insane...
Hmmm. Here's another piano ballad, and as sweet as it sounds, I'm starting to think that these "We're better off ending it now" sorts of songs are getting a bit tedious at this point. It's kind of funny to hear the band flip-flopping back and forth between "I want you so bad" and their timid "It's not you, it's not me" excuses that sound suspiciously like a case of morning-after regret. But this song's probably another case of being too generic to really read any motives into it one way or the other - it's chock full of generic rhymes like "It's not right, not okay/Say the words that you'll say/Maybe we're better off this way." Ugh. That's a triple threat of Songwriting 101 no-no's right there. I don't think she's scared that you're insane, Adam - more likely, she's scared that you're inane.

Back at Your Door
Three more days 'til I see your face
I'm afraid it's far too much
Cook a meal and fix up the place
Dial your number, hang it up...
Now here's a good solid R&B number to wrap up the album with. The band's back on firm musical footing here, with a slow, swirling rhythm of 6/8 that Adam's lyrics fit into quite wonderfully - he's really got the art of painting a descriptive picture nailed here, as he describes the little things in his apartment that remind him of a lover who has departed. He knows he's a sucker, but he knows he's gonna end up crawling right back to her once again after he realizes how lonely the weekends are without her - I don't necessarily have a whole lot of sympathy since he's basically saying, "Being with you beats total boredom". But I suppose pathetic beats controlling, as far as the moods of the protagonists in these songs go. This one becomes quite the show-stopper once it picks up some steam - it closes out the album with a touch of finesse, and serves as a good example of how the band can be a little sexy without going overboard. I'm actually reminded of the movie Sideways when I listen to this one - it might have served as a good soundtrack for that open-ended final scene.

Once I got over my initial embarrassment/disgust/cynical amusement at some of the lyrics, It Won't Be Soon Before Long proved to be an enjoyable enough listen on at least a superficial level, and really, that's a big part of what Songs About Jane was for me, too, but I found more of the lyrics to be relatable on that one, because sometimes they were about hurting or being hurt, but they were rarely ever heartless. (I'll admit that I had a bit of a blind spot regarding "Harder to Breathe".) I don't think the surface level enjoyment is quite enough to justify a purchase of this album, though, so that's why I can't really recommend it. I still think Maroon5 has a lot of potential, but they'll probably never live up to it as long as they remain massive pop stars, because there will be no need to show much maturity or responsibility in a genre where a lot of pretty faces seem to be singing about just getting what satisfies you. And I'm truly sorry if it feels like I'm on my moral soapbox about that, but you know, if you're going to write songs about characters who are more or less selfish b@st@rds, the least you can do is dig a little deeper into the psychology behind it.

ALBUM WORTH:
If I Never See Your Face Again $.50
Makes Me Wonder $0
Little of Your Time $1.50
Wake Up Call $0
Won't Go Home Without You $1
Nothing Lasts Forever $1.50
Can't Stop $.50
Goodnight, Goodnight $0
Not Falling Apart $1
Kiwi $.50
Better that We Break $.50
Back at Your Door $1
TOTAL: $8

Band Members:
Adam Levine: Lead vocals, guitar
James Valentine: Guitar
Jesse Carmichael: Keyboards
Mickey Madden: Bass
Matt Flynn: Drums

Website: http://www.maroon5.com

Recommended: No