- 2025-08-22
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MUSIC
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Maroon 5 Releases New Album “Love Is Like”
American pop rock band Maroon 5, consisting of Adam Levine (vocals/guitar), Jesse Carmichael (guitar), James Valentine (guitar), Matt Flynn (drums), PJ Morton (keyboards) and Sam Farrar (bass), released their eighth studio album “Love Is Like” on August 15, 2025 via 222 and Interscope Records.
This marks their first album in four years since the 2021 album “Jordi”. It is also their first album since 2012 album “Overexposed” to credit band members other than Adam Levine as songwriters.
The album comprises 10 tracks (deluxe edition 13 tracks), featuring guest appearances from American rapper Lil Wayne, South Korean girl group Blackpink's LISA, and American rapper Sexyy Red. Additionally, American DJ Marshmello performed “Closer” on the deluxe edition.
On the album, the band gets back to their roots in making music, but takes a different approach, incorporating sample-based writing.
The band frontman Adam Levine said of the album, “I feel like we've gone back to what we used to do, which is to not pay attention to where we fit and producing the music organically. This is kind of how we stuck out in the beginning when we first started our career.”
He told Apple Music, “I think it's been the full-circle journey so far, as far as the ways in which we made music and how we did it and where it took us, the waves that we rode, and now coming back to feeling like it's time to get back to the basics of what made it work in the first place. It's funny because the music that we wound up making feels really fresh and cool. For better or worse, we're proud of the thing we wound up having released because it's just different.”- The band members said of the album, respectively.
Adam Levine said, “I think I just was excited to start writing songs again, and can't force that. Fortunately, it worked out really well and got a lot of great ideas flowing really quickly. I hope that they hear something that's, like, rooted in what we used to be, but also very different and new.”
Bassist Sam Farrar said, “I think it kind of took a little bit of left turn when. Fede (keyboard player) sort of introduced sample based writing, I guess you can call it, like picking up old samples from records and Adam writing on top of that. It's really nice to see here, like, sort of, Maroon 5 sort of sounding half, and then this sort of sample-based half, that somehow it works together. It's not getting old for us. Still love it. Still love making music. I think we'll be doing this for a long time.”
Guitarist Jesse Carmichael said, “I really hope that people listen to the album as a whole, because we definitely are keeping the spirit of the album as a cohesive work alive in our minds.” -
The band explained some tracks for the album.
“Love Is Like” featuring Lil Wayne
“I was so reluctant to get help, kind of like I used to be, but then I had these new phone-a-friend-type resources that I had never had before, so I was like, 'Let's call someone and get a little help. There was one line of one song that I hit a fuckin' brick wall, and I was like, 'J Kash, can you help me write this line?'”
“All Night”
“So I remember when Benny [Blanco] came around a long while back. So we're in the studio. He kind of convinced me to write music away from the band. Because I had only kept it in the band before, so we'd never had outside writers on any of that stuff. I was like, 'Oh this is a lot of fun.' Having new energy is a great thing. And funnily enough, now I've kind of gone back to writing and shutting everybody out. But Benny was the first guy that got me to kind of think outside of the band.”
“Priceless” featuring LISA
Adam Levine: “It's just a guitar-based song, which we haven't really done in so long. It happened first for us while we were recording the album. I think it's just the purest and we are so happy to have Lisa on it. The guitar intro is literally me playing into an audio message on my iPhone with an unplugged guitar. I actually got a little emotional recording 'cause it was sort of reconnecting to our roots, which a lot of our fans have been saying 'Hey we want to hear that sound again.' It's been like over 20 years so I think it's time for that to return.”
James Valentine: “I got super emotional when Adam sent me the original demo of 'Priceless' because for me the sound represents Maroon 5's earlier days. I joined the band in 2001 so when I was seeing them play in 2000, 'Priceless' gave me the same sort of excitement from the chords to overall vibe. I was super stoked on it and it established the writing and sound for our album.”
“California”
“California is a really cool one, because we recorded it in the basement. And the vocal that you hear was recorded in kind of as it was being written. So the verses especially are very... I basically just like, and I did this on a lot of the album where it would be line by line. Usually we go back and do a million takes of a song. And then, 'okay, let's copy it,' you know, this works. And then, but all over dubs and make it shiny in fact. And literally, like you'll hear it, if you listen to the way the verses were done. I wasn't even sure what I was saying. And I was also a little bit insecure about what I was saying, because that happens a lot when you're writing, and you just make sounds more than you make words. And so, whatever you're hearing on the recording is, that's the first time that happened.”
Photo by Hugh Lippe - source : Apple Music
