“Payphone”

Album Review

Whether music fans like it or not, Maroon 5 is now forever linked to reality TV.

Frontman Adam Levine is currently one of four celebrity judges/coaches on NBC’s singing competition The Voice, and his role on the show may well be what most Americans end up identifying him with. The rest of the band, it seems, gets to catch the wave just for the fun of it. Last summer, Maroon 5’s collaboration with another Voice judge, Christina Aguilera, yielded the No. 1 smash ” Moves Like Jagger.” And if early sales of “Payphone” are any indication, Levine’s high-profile presence on TV continues to provide a muscular marketing advantage.

“Payphone,” which features guest rapper Wiz Khalifa, moved a massive 493,000 downloads its first week, the most ever for a band. (Flo Rida holds the best one-week tally for a solo artist after crooning his way through 636,000 units of ” Right Round” back in February 2009.) As Billboard writer Gary Trust notes, “How ironic that a song about something as old-fashioned as a payphone sets a digital download record.”

In some ways, “Payphone” does indeed sound like a bit of a throwback. Its melancholy protagonist is still trying to make sense of an unwanted breakup as he empties the last of his pocket change into a payphone in a futile attempt to reconnect with the woman who left him.

“I’m at a payphone trying to call home/All of my change I spent on you,” we hear in the chorus. “Where have the times gone/Baby, it’s all wrong/Where are the plans we made for two?”

Clearly this particular guy did not have moves like Jagger. Nor does he have an iPhone, it would seem.

His girl may have moved on. But his heart is still firmly fixed on—or fixated upon—the past. And he’s unable to let go of his romantic vision of what could’ve been: “You turned out the lights/Now I’m paralyzed/Still stuck in the time/When we called it love.”

If all that feels like a tale of pining woe that could’ve played on record or cassette in 1984, however, the song’s bridge is up-to-the-minute contemporary—and not in a good way. In it, we repeatedly hear why this tune has earned an “advisory” sticker.

Regret eventually degenerates into bitter cynicism—punctuated with harsh profanities: “If happy ever after did exist/I would still be holding you like this/All those fairytales are full of s‑‑‑/One more f‑‑‑ing love song, I’ll be sick.” The radio edit softens things a bit, replacing the s-word with “it” and the f-word with “stupid.” But all that really does is beg the question of why the band couldn’t have just written it sans swearing in the first place.

No sad sack reject, rapper Wiz Khalifa begins his contribution with expletives as well: “Man, f‑‑‑ that s‑‑‑,” he spits. (The radio edit here censors expletives with “work” and a partial bleep.) In archetypal rap fashion, he insists that someday she’ll regret kicking him to the curb (“Made it from the bottom/Now when you see me, I’m stunning”). As for her new man, well, “You can go and take that little piece of s‑‑‑ with you,” Khalifa concludes.

Can’t a guy with Levine’s current cultural standing see that inserting such harsh profanity adds nothing to an otherwise innocuous song?

Then again, maybe he’s taking notes from yet another Voice judge, Cee Lo Green, who made a fortune and racked up a whole lotta fame with his recent smash hit … titled ” F**k You.”