Red Pill Blues

Maroon 5 - Red Pill Blues
Critic Score
Based on 13 reviews
2017 Ratings: #929 / 940
User Score
Based on 584 ratings
2017 Rank: #938
Liked by 9 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

75
Entertainment Weekly

The R&B- and funk-laden Blues, their best and most cohesive set of the decade, is actually worth some appointment listening.

70
AllMusic

Taken on its own musical terms, Red Pill Blues is a sleek, assured affair, one that sustains a seductive neon-streaked mood from beginning to end.

70
Rolling Stone
On the sixth M5 LP, Adam Levine nuances a role he plays well: the Top 40 old-soul navigating whatever the pop-music moment throws his way.
65
The Young Folks
Although nothing on the album is so novel as to be remarkable, it’s surely enough to entertain listeners.
60
The Guardian

Singer Adam Levine has said this is the group’s R&B album, and so it is, though not in any remotely experimental way: superstar rap guest spots can’t disrupt the torpor that too often becomes a default setting.

60
Evening Standard
As ever, there are some great singles: the synthy grooves of Best 4 U, the Kendrick Lamar-featuring Don’t Wanna Know. But the overall impression is one of a band best enjoyed in microdoses.
50
Spectrum Culture
Albums shouldn’t sound like aural equivalent of rendering a graph on a TI-83, but so long as the paltry gems that bloat Maroon 5’s studio releases keep hitting the Billboard charts, Trigonometry Pop is here to stay.
48
Pitchfork

It’s this utter lack of libido that ends up making Red Pill Blues so difficult to even finish.

40
Sputnikmusic
It's just kind of there, with nine boring tracks, an incredibly short Lunchmoney Lewis verse and six minutes of noodling at the end of "Closure" to prove the band still exists. That's it.
40
Slant Magazine

Red Pill Blues has moments that recall other, superior pop music—including the group's own 2002 debut, Songs About Jane—but it's still a latter-day Maroon 5 album, which means it also has more than its share of bland, underachieving grist for suburban shopping centers and “rhythmic pop” radio.

40
The Independent

Moments after hearing “Best 4 You”, with its slimline groove and sleek falsetto chorus, I can’t remember a trace of its melody or theme: it was just there, and then not there. It’s an experience repeated throughout Red Pill Blues.

40
The Irish Times
They concoct a cocktail of the most generic love songs like a collection of bargain-basement Valentine’s cards. Free from real sentiment or emotion, they are the perfect anthems for the blank, right-swiping, ghosting generation.
20
The Skinny

With Red Pill Blues Levine and co have managed to produce an album that is uninteresting and unexciting; at best this is background music, to be listened to on very, very low volume, or even better, not at all.

Dombot
NR

Remember kids, if you see an album cover with Snapchat filters, you run far and you run fast.

itsyahboinoah
24

The artwork of this album sums up the whole project itself.....

davidlopess97
18

And the award for the worst artwork this year goes to...

JustC
10

No, just... No

20

When you see a cover like this, you know the type of album you are going to find. The putrid production that Mr. Levine is so fascinated by is the order of the day, the character that our friend Adam created, you know, what Maroon 5 has tried hard to do in recent years. Generic with passion, more overproduced than ever, and extremely lacking any pulse. It is truly admirable how confident Adam Levine and his friends are to come forward with such proof of their lack of integrity. I don't know if ... read more

TheZetaCoreYT
30

After Hands All Over I decided to redo some of my Maroon 5 reviews.

And ummm...yeah. This is A LOT worse than I remember. Stuff that I thought slapped seemed kind of bland and boring. The features here were crap as well. Especially the SZA and LunchMoney Lewis ones. The opening and closing tracks were still solid. I think the vibe of the closing track was pretty good and worked out well. Wait was tolerable I guess. Whiskey is now my least favorite song by them though.

Average Score: ... read more

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Track List

1Best 4 U
3:59
52
2What Lovers Do
3:19
feat. SZA
47
3Wait
3:10
55
4Lips on You
3:36
35
5Bet My Heart
3:16
32
6Help Me Out
3:13
31
7Who I Am
3:03
31
8Whiskey
3:30
25
9Girls Like You
3:35
22
10Closure
11:29
61
Total Length: 42 minutes
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Added on: October 6, 2017