The Singles Jukebox

And now, let’s end the week with a damp fart…

[Video][Website]
[3.75]

Matt Cibula: I don’t know; it’s been a few weeks since I checked in, so I’m a bit discombobulated. Do I reward Maroon 5 for being more of a band now, or wonder why Adam Levine doesn’t put more emphasis on the singing part of his singing here, or what? Overall, this is kinda acceptably funky in some ways, disappointing in others, and I guess I’m only giving it a 6 because I predict no one else will go higher than 3.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I bet someone somewhere really loves this unctuous whiteboy funk, really gets meaning and poetry and ecstasy from it, has their world magicked into an infinitely cooler, more heightened, more cinematic place by having this as a soundtrack to it. Not me, though.
[4]

Al Shipley: These lite funky ones were in such perfect command of their sound on “Makes Me Wonder” that I’d assumed their next lead single would follow suit, but this is a step back to their first album amateurishness.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: I have never been able to work up the slightest interest in them. This is perky sub-disco pop-rock with lots of falsetto singing, something like a tenth-rate Bee Gees. I guess it will please their fans, but I can’t see it. (I deserve some credit for not using the title to beat them with, I think.)
[3]

Doug Robertson: If you like Maroon 5 you’re going to love this, what with it being the very essence of their previous releases distilled into a 3 and a half minute re-cap of their career. Of course, their essence is disappointingly bland white soul with any hint of funk surgically removed so it’s all about as palatable as Dulux soup.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Adam Levine’s scorched-sweet-potato vocals never had a better setting than “Makes Me Wonder,” which the guitarist seems to know since he mimics his work on that track. In a replay of the Daryl Hall Syndrome, Levine’s more compelling when his okay looks demand satisfaction instead of pleading for emotional rescue or something. But couldn’t he get Rihanna to sing the chorus?
[4]

Chuck Eddy: Assuming the Jamiroquai inflections aren’t a new touch, this sounds more or less exactly as innocuous as every other hit I’ve ever heard from them. Which might count for something (at least they’ve got their own sound), but not very much.
[2]

Michaelangelo Matos: Adam Levine is starting to sound like a duck call. Beyond that, it’s starting to sound like his band has succumbed to heavier-than-usual studio cryogenics: the vocal harmonies are just too smooth for their own good, and while I get they’re going for what the Doobies were in ’79, only now, and that this is part of the territory, I don’t have to care. “It’s not what I didn’t feel/It’s what I didn’t show” is a good line, but when it goes into a chorus as lame as “I am in misery/There ain’t nobody who can comfort me”, what can you do except wait for it to run its course?
[5]