Death By Exposure

Maroon 5 has recently released their fourth studio album, cheekily titled "Overexposed." My personal taste in music has only a very narrow space in which pop music finds purchase, but Maroon 5's three previous albums all managed to wedge in there. I figured that I'd give the new album a try.

I don't actually "hate" the new album, but I certainly don't like it as much as any of the previous ones. And I think that what's ultimately to blame is that this is the first album the band has released in the post-"The Voice" world. Lead singer Adam Levine is now, as the album's title acknowledges, overexposed. And I think the fact that he's offering weekly critiques of would-be pop stars puts added pressure on any music he himself releases. It has to be good. Of course, "good" being highly subjective, it must instead be "successful" financially.

And so Maroon 5 now seems to have gone out to try to deliberately craft an entire album in the mold of their big post-Voice radio hit, "Moves Like Jagger." The new album has several tracks that use a similar disco-esque rhythm. "Jagger" was the first time the band worked with an outside songwriter, and was their biggest hit, so this time they brought in all kinds of outside producers and writers. "Jagger" was also a collaboration with another performer (fellow Voice judge Christina Aguilera), so better do that too -- rapper Wiz Khalifa is brought in to take a verse on one track.

The result is an album that only occasionally sounds like Maroon 5. It's a collection of songs that are mostly decent, without a single one that's five-star great. Lead single "Payphone" is fairly catchy... until that God-awful rap verse intrudes. Album opener "One More Night" has a good pop melody... but overly processed vocals. So on for the entire album... no song better than a B-grade effort, a handful of songs truly terrible.

In this iPod age, you can still cherry pick the album for a few of the better tracks. But it's still far and away Maroon 5's weakest effort ever. I'd grade it a B- overall.