James Valentine: Maroon 5’s New Album Could Sound Like ‘Songs About Jane’
It’s been over two years since the Adam Levine lead Maroon 5 has released a new full-length album. But not only is guitarist James Valentine promising a new song and a new music video soon, he also shed some light as to what kind of sound the follow-up to their smash fifth album, V, might become –- and it’s got fans of the band’s early work buzzing.
“We do have a song that I think we’re going to put out in between this record and our next record, which we just put the finishing touches on,” Valentine said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “And we have some more songs in various states of progress that we’ll be working on at the end of this year and beginning of next year.”
He then went on to add that the band has discussed a more “organic, back to a Songs About Jane sort of approach” to the record, meaning less synth and more rock.
Songs About Jane was the band’s breakout debut album that yielded hits like “She Will Be Loved,” “Harder to Breathe,” and “This Love.” Subsequent records, however, strayed far from the jazz-pop foundation Songs About Jane laid, and many fans have been clamoring for a return to that sound for many years.
“But we’ll have to see,” Valentine warned. “We don’t ever really know until we get into the studio and we kind of just have to follow what everybody’s interested in.”
Maroon 5 has gone on to become one of the biggest bands on the planet, thanks in part to their aforementioned versatility. In fact, the migration from jazz-pop to a more synth heavy, dance sound is most likely the reason they’re as popular today as ever. It’s a fact Valentine recognizes in an interview with Go Knoxville, where he credits the band’s variety for their success.
“We took great pride in the fact that we wrote every note on the record and we never even considered collaborating with anyone else,” Valentine said when discussing “Moves Like Jagger” the monster single off their third album that not only took the band into new territory but opened the band up to collaboration from different songwriters.
“But we were down to try something completely different. We felt like we were in a creative rut at that point, which happens with bands. Bands go through natural creative cycles. After our third record we needed to try something different.”
He also credits Adam Levine’s decision to join NBC’s The Voice in 2011 as another factor aiding in the band’s success.
“Adam joining up on The Voice, we really had no idea that would be such a positive for the band. We thought that was maybe an awful idea! But that helped people connect the dots. We had all those songs out there, but I think as people got to know Adam as a person they started to connect as, ‘Oh, that’s the guy from that band and they sing this song and this song and this song.’ It was kind of a multiplier effect.”
And while the band hasn’t exactly been dormant, Valentine realizes that Levine’s time with The Voice has had an impact on how much the band can hit the road together.
“That’s been a little bit of adjustment. We still tour a lot. We were on the road for 10 years pretty much all the time when we weren’t making a record. I love being on the road. I love the routine. I love waking up in a new city and it’s great feeling being on stage. Once you get that buzz from being on stage it never goes away.”
As noted by People, Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine will be featured on the music documentary series Ernie Ball: The Pursuit of Tone on September 16th.
[Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for CBS Radio Inc.]
