Songoftheday 5/20/24 - How dare you say that my behavior's unacceptable, so condescending unnecessarily critical...

 

 

"Harder To Breathe" - Maroon 5

from the album Songs About Jane (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

 

Today's song comes from the pop band Maroon 5, who started out in their high school years under the name Kara's Flowers, with lead singer and guitarist Adam Levine, drummer Ryan Dusick, guitarist Jesse Carmichael, and bass player Mickey Madden. Together they recorded and released an album themselves, We Like Digging?, which got the attention of producer Rob Cavallo (who brought Green Day to the mainstream). With Cavallo they were signed to Reprise Records, and recorded their sophomore album with him, The Fourth World. However the indie-pop project tanked and they were scuttled from the label. 

After concentrating on college, the band got back together and starting playing gigs in a new lite-funk rock style, and eventually were picked up by Octone Records. Adding a fifth member, James Valentine, to handle lead guitar duties, they renamed themselves Maroon 5. Valentine was friends with singer/songwriter John Mayer, who took them on his tour while they were promoting their first album under the new name, Songs About Jane, which was released in 2002. Word of mouth spread, and in time their first single, "Harder To Breathe", started to gain radio attention starting at the beginning of 2003. Written by Levine and Carmichael, the track is more punchy rock in the Third Eye Blind vein, with Levine almost rap-singing the verses to the midtempo groove chorus. The lyrics are meant to be sassy and biting with Adam dispatching a lover who was messing with his head. The production from Matt Wallace keeps the guitar noise in the front but keeps it melodic enough to not offput pop radio. In fact in the single mix I can't hear Carmichael's keys until a faint trace in the chorus. Nevertheless, the hooks were strong, and Levine is ultra-charismatic, and slowly but surely the song conquered format after format until it reached the Hot 100..

"Harder To Breathe" became Maroon 5's breakthrough single, making the top 20 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in November of 2003, a year and a half after its initial release. On the radio, the song peaked at #5 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, #15 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, and #31 on the Alternative Rock airplay list. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in the United Kingdom (#13), New Zealand (#33),  Ireland (#34), and Australia (#37). The Songs About Jane album, released in June of 2002, took until September of 2004 to make it to #6 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, spending 158 weeks on the list and going on to sell over five million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2005, the band won the award for Best New Artist. 

Both the band and the Songs About Jane album will be back to the series.

(8/10)

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Here's the band promoting the song on Jimmy Kimmel in 2003, where the keyboards finally get their moment...

next up in concert from their Live Friday The 13th live set...

That same year the band performed the song at the Live 8 charity extravaganza....

For Vevo, Maroon 5 did their thing on top of a building across from Lincoln Center in New York...

and finally, from Rock In Rio in 2011...

Up tomorrow: Rapper checks into the top ten hotel for a second time.