Maroon 5’s New Album: Adam Levine Working Alone In Studio?

How do you top being the biggest band around in 2015? By putting together a follow-up to the massively successful V in 2016.

And according to Media Mass, that’s exactly what Adam Levine and Maroon 5 are up to these days. Calling it a “back to roots” style album, not much is known save for the fact that Levine has been seen in studio, and eight songs have been put to tape.

“It’s still in the early stages,” their source said. “They got security on the doors to ensure no-one hears a whisper.”

A “back-to-roots” effort could be what a lot of Adam Levine fans were hoping V would be, especially after the past two Maroon 5 records took the band in a much different direction than when they made their debut in 2002 with Songs About Jane. As reported by Inquisitr, their recent greatest hits album was even missing a few key songs from that era, and starting with Overexposed, their sound changed from a unique jazz/pop fusion into a decidedly dance/pop direction.

“You can hear that chutzpah in the blinged-up disco sheen of Maroon 5’s new LP,” Rolling Stone said in its review of Overexposed in 2012. “This is where Adam Levine cops to the slick Hollywood sex-panther role he’s perfected on TV, wheedling and pitching woo to every lady within earshot, even though they know he won’t remember their name in the morning.”

The reason for the shift of course was Adam shedding solo writing duties and bringing in hit makers Max Martin and Benny Blanco. Martin made a name for himself crafting songs for Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and ‘NSync in the late 90s, and more recently writing songs for Christina Aguilera and Taylor Swift.

In an interview with MusicTimes, Levine admitted that Overexposed was a conscious effort to raise the profile of the band. Adam was quoted as saying the band made a “very conscious effort to have as many hits as we possibly could” on the record, triggered from the crossover audience discovering Levine on TV.

“The band had this new-found success from The Voice and then ‘Moves Like Jagger’ and we were very excited because we hadn’t had hits for a while. So we were very hit-drunk.”

V was a continuation of that transformation, though not necessarily with the same “hit” formula in mind.

“On this record, we’ve balanced those things [by] adding a bit more thought into what would make a great album — instead of being just a collection of pop hits,” Levine said just before its release.

But make no mistake, V is another Maroon 5 pop album. It also received a tremendous boost from the controversial videos for singles “Animals” and “Sugar” that brought even more attention to Maroon 5 as a whole. “Animals” drew the ire of several national women’s organizations for depicting stalking in a sexy and not dangerous light.

And “Sugar” became a national sensation when the video hit the internet. The Maroon 5 video saw the band crashing several weddings across the Los Angeles area, surprising couples with what appeared to be spontaneous performances. Of course, it was later learned that half the video was actually staged, but by that time, Maroon 5’s “Sugar” became another classic for the band.

Whatever the sound the new album turns out to be, the one known for Maroon 5 in 2016 is that they’re hitting the road for their recently announced fall tour. According to the Maroon 5 website, the band will kick things off in Texas before making their way up the East Coast and across the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Maroon 5 and Adam Levine will wrap their fall tour in Sacramento at the end of 2016.

[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]