Having found out a short while ago that Maroon 5 released a single from their upcoming album Hands All Over (due for release on September 21), I’ve been wanting to hear it. I was never a huge fan of Maroon 5 until I was forced to listen to them over and over again a few years ago. They were always too pop for me; I prefer my rock hard, with a splash of metal. But like things tend to do, Maroon 5 grew on me and I became a fan.
Released on June 22, 2010, in the iTunes Store, “Misery” garnered favorable press from Billboard, MTV and Rolling Stone. It is currently sitting at 4.5 stars with 1438 ratings in the iTunes Store and is played with regularity on most mainstream pop/rock radio stations.
Rising to number 28 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, “Misery” is the sort of upbeat, rhythmic song we’ve come to expect from the band. Nothing new or adventurous here, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The song is easy to listen to and tells a good story, one of Adam Levine begging for another chance with his lover.
“Misery” is reminiscent of “This Love” in that it contains an almost funk-like melody and gets in your head so bad you need to play the song again and again to overcome it. If the whole of the new album is anywhere near as catchy as this tune, it will no doubt be a successful one.
The music video for “Misery,” which was directed by Joseph Kahn, chooses to go for violence over sex to tell the story, as we see Adam Levine getting his ass kicked all over the place by model Anne Vyalitsyna. The video starts out innocent enough with the two roughly throwing each other against a fence and kissing at one another, but that goes out the window quickly. In chronological order we see the following: a headbutt, a slap upside the head, a knee to the groin, a punch to the face, a kick to the face, Levine being hit by a car, having his head slammed into a wall and then in a door, then back into a wall, then being dunked head-first into a sink full of water. After this he’s kicked through a window, and thrown off a fire-escape and… well, it’s just too much to list and too campy and over-the-top not to enjoy. Check it out here.
American music videos often choose violence over sex. We favor it, in this country. In Europe it’s rare to see a music video without some nudity. Here, it’s rare to see one without blood.
That’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.
Yeah, I can see your point. It’s interesting to me how we, as a society, are completely okay with gratuitous violence on the silver screen, but sex is a taboo that requires massive amounts of censorship. Just think, if we applied the same rules to movies like “Saw” or “Hostel” for their violence as we do to movies with with sex in them… Come to think of it, there aren’t really any movies I can name that have gratuitous sex in them because the MPAA hasn’t really approved any for mass release that I know of. It just speaks volumes to me that we’re that sexually repressed when we’re supposed to be the developing world. Y’know?