Maroon 5 News: Despite Controversial Video, ‘Animals’ Cracks The Top 5 Of The Hot 100
Adam Levine and Maroon 5 have yet another top five hit song on their hands — despite a raging controversy over the music video that accompanied it.
As reported by Yahoo! Music, Maroon 5’s “Animals” jumped into the top five in its 10th week on the Hot 100. This marks Adam Levine and company’s seventh top five hit, its first since “One More Night” two years ago.
“Animals” also put an end to a remarkable seven-week streak in which only female artists appeared in the top five. Currently, as reported by Inquisitr, Meghan Trainor’s breakout single “All About That Bass” currently sits atop as #1.
That Maroon 5’s “Animals” was able to keep women from extending their history-making streak for an eighth week is a something of an irony considering how much heat the song, and front man Adam Levine in particular, have taken since the video’s debut. “Animals” has been blasted up and down by women’s groups outraged at how the video promotes stalking as a natural part of the courting process.
Paste Magazine recently waxed that this kind of glorification is an alarming trend in pop culture, sighting the Maroon 5 video as well as the CBS’ show Stalker as an example. Both programs were widely criticized upon their release with both parties having to defend their content. Paste makes the argument that while Maroon 5’s “Animals” and Kevin Williamson’s Stalker are not to blame for violence against women, they certainly don’t help either.
“While no one reasonably thinks media portrayals such as these cause stalking and violence, they undoubtedly help comprise the contextual space where people, overwhelmingly women, regularly suffer from both. Just last week, for instance, a woman in Queens ignored a man’s unsolicited attempts to talk to her. He then slashed her throat, leaving her in critical condition. Another woman, Mary ‘Unique’ Spears of Detroit, was shot dead after being harassed by a man.”
It’s also possible that Maroon 5 knew the publicity surrounding the song would be key to its success. Adam Levine told Ryan Seacrest on his syndicated radio show a month before the song hit that “‘Animals’ is going to be something to talk about,” insinuating the band knew what it was doing.
And while the video has received some unlikely support from the likes of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) because the slaughter house it was shot at puts the meat packing industry in full view of the public’s eye, the overall attention surrounding the Maroon 5 song had not been favorable up until this point.
