Super Bowl 2019: The best Maroon 5 songs ahead of their half-time show

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Harry Fletcher30 January 2019

Maroon 5’s appeal, like vampiric singer Adam Levine himself, never seems to get old.

The group have been ever-present in the charts since way back in 2002, shifting 27 million album sales and racking up billions of streams over the course of an impressive 17-year career.

If their position as one of the biggest pop acts in the world ever needed confirmation, Maroon 5 are headlining the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, expected to play to an audience of more than 100 million viewers around the world.

Take a look back at their career with our picks for the group’s five best tracks.

5. Sugar (2014)

Sugar does exactly what the title suggests — it’s a sweet pop record that, as the plays rack up on YouTube past the 2.8 billion mark, has proven just as addictive as the real thing.

With an innocent and irresistible chorus refrain, the track is an ode to innocent fun, proving once again that pop songs don’t have to mean an awful lot to resonate. It’s not flawless: the hugely compressed production and drum machine snare suck a little life out of the song, while there’s not much of the band’s identity sprinkled across it (it could just as easily be a Justin Timberlake track). Still, there’s still real vivacity to the song, which marked their most successful record since 2012’s One More Night.

4. What Lovers Do ft SZA (2017)

Try not to get too distracted by the bizarre video — the clip sees Adam Levine jog around with penguins and go surfing with guest vocalist SZA and a pod of dolphins, before trampling a city like some kind of pop-rock Godzilla — and there’s a joyous three-and-a-half minutes of pop to discover here.

The track does what Maroon 5 songs do best — lodge inside your head and never let go — and like most of their singles, it’s breezy, inconsequential and all the better as a result. The video, while totally bonkers, also highlighted just how much Levine’s profile has risen comparatively to the rest of the band. While always the face of the band, the singer appears to have jettisoned the rest of the group completely at this point, both sonically and as a celebrity.

3. This Love (2002)

The track that, together with Harder To Breathe, announced the band to the world. This Love’s soulful, groove-oriented feel made a big impact with fans — landing at three and five in the UK and US charts respectively — and confirmed them as one of America’s hottest commercial exports. Revisiting the band’s 2002 debut single now, it’s apparently just how dramatically the band’s sound has changed since — this early single is all percussive piano jabs, funked-up distorted guitars and a slick soft rock production. The lush harmonies, soulful arrangements and major 7th chord changes are long-gone in 2019 though, and the band’s music is, arguably, worse off as a result.

2. Payphone (2012)

2012 album Overexposed something of a turning point for Maroon 5. It marked the beginning of the band’s transformation from soul and funk-inflected soft rockers to full-out chart pop behemoths, banging out radio-friendly hits for fun. Payphone, the lead single, felt like a key moment.

Whereas Moves Like Jagger comes across as a bit of a crass, personality-less joke, there was much more spark and emotional candour with this one, released just a year later. The themes of longing for home and missing loved ones — two of the most-visited in popular music — are eloquently done here and give the song an emotive appeal. It was also the band’s first single to feature a guest rapped verse, and Wiz Khalifa’s addition works well. From then on, rap features became something the band would later have much success with, on singles Don’t Wanna Know with Kendrick Lamar, Cold with Future and Girls Like You with Cardi B.

1. She Will Be Loved (2002)

Despite being one of their very earliest hits, She Will Be Loved remains the band’s most refined piece of songwriting. Based around a simple, elegant guitar line, before building to a shimmering chorus, the song is packed with lyrics analysing damaged relationships and unrequited love — not to mention obsession (“I don't mind spending everyday/Out on your corner in the pouring rain.”) The song has lodged itself into popular culture, sure to feature on Sunday Love Songs compilations and radio playlists until the end of time. It remains the emotional heart of any Maroon 5 show to this day and the band’s most enduring track.

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