Red Pill Blues
Growing up is hard to do, but Maroon 5 heed adulthood’s call on their sixth album. Sort of. The wildly successful pop-rock band still focus on songs about love and longing, but their vantage point has started to shift. Vocalist Adam Levine sounds tired of endless games on the songs “What Lovers Do,” “Plastic Rose,” and “Don’t Wanna Know,” but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to throw away *every* good time (“Girls Like You”). Levine and crew bolster their cadence-driven style with moodier, synth-heavy moments and dancehall tempos. Thanks to co-signs from SZA, A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, Future, and more, the result moves the band closer to Drake, the Weeknd, and even Major Lazer’s territory.
Red Pill Blues is the sixth studio album by American pop rock band Maroon 5. This is US Deluxe edition with bonus tracks.
Adam Levine’s band return for their sixth album of smooth, professional, antiseptic soft-rock, which somehow also features Kendrick Lamar, Future, and A$AP Rocky.
Set aside the unforced error of the title Red Pill Blues, an allusion to The Matrix that has also been co-opted by Men's Right Activists -- a group whose combative sensibility is the polar opposite of the perpetually smooth Maroon 5. Set aside, too, the album cover, where the group -- who now number seven -- are all decked out with Snapchat filters, a gambit that suggests the group is a bit too sensitive about their veteran status.
Maroon 5 offer up an album full of bewilderingly bad chart hits with their sixth studio album, Red Pill Blues.
The album makes one yearn for an era when there seemed to be more room for genuinely ambitious, artful Top 40 pop.