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Maroon 5 Skips Sophomore Slump

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By GARY GRAFF, The New York Times Syndicate

Published: October 19, 2007

Thanks to the success of its second album, 'It Won't Be Soon Before Long,' Maroon 5 isn't sweating the sophomore slump anymore.

Released in May as the follow-up to the group's 10-million-selling debut, 'Songs About Jane' (2002), 'It Won't Be Soon Before Long' debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. The first single, 'Makes Me Wonder,' did the same on the Hot 100, and the group is confident that its latest single, a ballad called 'I Won't Go Home Without You,' has even more potential.

In short, the Los Angeles-based quintet has learned, to its obvious relief, that its audience hasn't abandoned it and moved on to other pop hit-makers during its five-year gap between records.

'It is sort of a test,' guitarist James Valentine says. 'One record doesn't mean that you've proven anything. I'm excited now that that's over. We were really glad to make it through this record.'

Singer Adam Levine agrees.

'I think there's varying degrees of sophomore slumps,' he says. 'I think we've avoided Spin Doctors territory - we haven't just disappeared off the face of the Earth. But I think, at the same time, we have a lot more to prove. We want a career. We want to be around for a while ... not just to be a flavor of the month or flavor of the year.'

Levine, Valentine and their bandmates, keyboardist Jesse Carmichael, bassist Mickey Madden and new drummer Matt Flynn, can be excused for feeling a degree of pressure. Most of them have been playing music together since high school, during which they formed the band Kara's Flowers, which fell apart after its unsuccessful first album, 'The Fourth World' (1997).

Maroon 5 took some time to get going: Levine and Carmichael left temporarily to study music at the State University of New York on Long Island; and 'Songs About Jane,' whose tracks were inspired by one of Levine's former girlfriends, took some time to find traction. The album had been out for more than a year before the single 'Harder to Breathe' crept into the Billboard Top 20, starting a chain of polished pop hits that included 'This Love,' 'She Will be Loved,' 'Sunday Morning' and 'Must Get Out,' as well as a Grammy Award for Best New Artist of 2005.

So Maroon 5 learned firsthand that patience is indeed a virtue.

'I think there weren't a lot of bands that sounded like us when we came out,' the 28-year-old Carmichael says. 'We had to build up a following by touring for the first year, and slowly but surely radio stations would start adding our songs. It was an organic process, as opposed to a big blitz.'

The 28-year-old Levine says that even then the band kept things in perspective.

'The cool thing is that we weren't bitter or upset that people weren't picking up on it right off the bat,' he says. 'Going out there and getting fans was the only thing on our minds at the time. We wanted to give them a reason to play us on radio and put us on television and make it a real grass-roots thing.'

ON TOUR

Maroon 5

WITH: The Hives

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: The Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa

TICKETS: $20, $40.50, $50.50; box office, (813) 301-6500; Ticketmaster, (813) 287-8844

Gary Graff is a Beverly Hills, Mich.-based freelance writer.

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