Oh Adam Levine, he of permanent O-face and wearer of wallet chain. It’s an easy task to poke fun at the Maroon 5 singer and co as the band played the launch party for the Windows Phone 7: flannel, songs about love and misery, questions. (“Is that a sperm tattooed on his arm?”)
Levine is less douchey than say, John Mayer. And in the realm of mass pop music, Maroon 5 have carved themselves out a massive nitch. Exhibit #1: nearly every other song during the set was a hit or radio single. “This Love,” “Wake Up Call,” “Sunday Morning,” and even a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” all made appearances during the band’s hour-long set. Fans who had waited patiently in line outside The Fillmore for hours, after having patiently waited for additional hours earlier that morning to score tickets to the show, clapped the enthusiasm out of their fingertips and cheered after every song like it was Maroon 5’s last.
It was a stadium show squeezed into a 1,100 capacity auditorium, complete with rigs, lights, and jumbotron-like screens fit for The Rolling Stones. After asking hecklers to shut up and denying requests to get naked on stage, he got back to simultaneously being a pop star and rock star: there’s a bit of slinky seduction in the way he moves that both satisfies the female fans, balanced with a fair amount of shredding (for soothing the male fans?). The music might not be the best, but Levine sells it like it is. After all, he’s got the white boy strut down.
