Maroon 5

JORDI

Often ‘Jordi’ ends up sounding like the confusing city centre all-you-can-eat buffets that attempt to serve up nearly every kind of cuisine imaginable.

Continual evolutions has pushed them away from their roots, feeling less like a band and more like a committee, marking out different strategies without truly owning one themselves.

Whether it’s trying to be light, serious, or somewhere in the middle, Jordi can only get it done in half-measures.

Maroon 5’s seventh album sets out to experiment beyond their comfort zone. It sounds like a band trying desperately to appeal to as many markets as possible.

There’s something fascinating about the way Maroon 5’s music continues to slither into the charts. In a way it’s representative of Maroon 5 themselves: ubiquitous, but irrelevant.

Auto-Tuned vocals and a long parade of big name guest vocalists make this sound like a band without clear identity.

It’s booming business as usual: success by dint of giving people exactly what they expect, that makes you wonder whether people should expect more from pop.

Contrary to what Levine says here, Jordi doesn’t feel like a musical challenge. It doesn’t feel like great music that will stand the test of time. It feels like an album that is riding in the slipstream of what is popular right now.

In some senses the emptiness of it all is genuinely harrowing – almost impressively so: the sort of thing that JG Ballard-loving avant gardists strain to articulate. But mainly it’s just not very good.

Now, you don't need me to tell you this album is terrible for you to know that it is, which is a testament to Maroon 5's ineptitude for the past decade. Even while keeping that in mind, this is worse than whatever you're imagining. Let that sink in for a moment, then continue reading.

Another in a line of Maroon 5’s creative bankruptcy despite being dedicated to their late manager, JORDI barely feels like an album; It sounds more like a financial scheme dressed up as heartless pop.