This guitar-heavy, dance-floor-ready song is perfect for radio airwaves. “Lucky Strike” is a lightning-paced disco jam that calls upon a time when dance floors lit up and people boogied the night away. It’s crazy, sure, but you don’t want out. Colors are flying, lights are flashing, things are spinning and changing and you aren’t sure what to expect from one moment to the next. Listening to Overexposed is like being stuck in a carnival funhouse. On the opener, “One More Night,” the beat pops up quickly and drops back down like a jack-in-the-box that can’t sit still. It shouldn’t make sense, but it does it captures your attention and holds it. It is bright and colorful pandemonium, depicting cartoon characters and a giant nose. The album cover for Overexposed sums up the music in one single, chaotic picture. This is pop in its purest sense: a band playing actual instruments, producing toe-tapping, ear-grabbing tunes for everyone to enjoy. No overproduced choruses and auto-tune here. With Matt Flynn on drums, Mickey Madden on bass, James Valentine on guitar and Levine’s distinctive vocals, Maroon 5 proves that they are going to do pop their own way. In Overexposed, PJ Morton takes the place of former bandmate Jesse Carmichael on the keyboard. Levine is still crooning about being unlucky in love. Overexposed may be full of pop, but the alt-rock guitars and drums that fans fell in love with on Songs About Jane are still there. Maroon 5’s talent lies in the band’s ability to have a cohesive sound and still create albums that are different. Overexposed is not Songs About Jane 2.0, and here, that’s a good thing.
With that in mind, one would expect the album to be a sell-out to mainstream pop fans in a place eons away from the band’s exceptional first album, Songs About Jane, which won three Grammy’s and the critics’ hearts. It is shiny pop perfection, wrapped up with a bow and created for the millions of fans who watched frontman Adam Levine spin around on reality television.
Overexposed, Maroon 5’s newest and fourth LP, is for the masses. Jenna Wilson ('15)/ News/ Features Editor
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