Los Angeles, CA · pop

Maroon 5

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Two decades of inescapable radio — Songs About Jane craft under a stadium-pop machine.

The band's roots go back to 1994, when Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael, Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick formed Kara's Flowers as teenagers at Brentwood School in Los Angeles. After self-releasing an independent album, they signed to Reprise Records and put out their debut, The Fourth World, in 1997, which drew little attention; the label dropped them and the members went off to college.

In 2001 the group re-emerged as Maroon 5, adding guitarist James Valentine and signing to Octone Records. Their debut as Maroon 5, Songs About Jane, was built on funk- and soul-inflected pop rock and Levine's falsetto, and the singles "Harder to Breathe", "This Love" and "She Will Be Loved" pushed it to quadruple platinum and earned the band the 2005 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Dusick left in 2006 after wrist and shoulder injuries and was replaced by Matt Flynn. Subsequent albums moved steadily toward pop and dance-pop production: It Won't Be Soon Before Long (2007) and its single "Makes Me Wonder" both topped the charts, Hands All Over (2010) was reissued with the number-one "Moves Like Jagger", and Overexposed (2012) produced "One More Night", which held the Hot 100 top spot for nine weeks.

Later lineups brought in PJ Morton on keyboards and Sam Farrar, who became bassist after Mickey Madden's 2020 departure. V (2014) and Red Pill Blues (2017) yielded further number-one and number-two singles in "Sugar" and "Girls Like You", followed by Jordi (2021) and Love Is Like (2025). The band has sold more than 135 million records and won three Grammy Awards and three American Music Awards.

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