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I have a confession to make: Prior to their concert on Tuesday night, I thought Maroon 5 was just another pretty boy band, with nice enough melodies, but perhaps not enough cojones to sustain my interest throughout a full-length concert.
I won’t make that mistake again. Maroon 5’s concerts are nothing like their CDs or music videos, keyboardist Jesse Carmichael had promised me prior to their coming here. If you’d only heard our albums, you’d be in for a big surprise indeed, he’d warned, adding: “We do a real rock ’n’ roll show.”
For “rock ‘n’ roll”, read “loud”. Really loud.
Louder than standing in the same room with a pneumatic drill going off, it felt like. If they could, their amps would have gone up to “11” instead of the usual “10”. I’ve seen rock shows at the Singapore Indoor Stadium before: Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Eric Clapton, Santana, The Police and Linkin Park, but — you might blame the ageing process for this — none of them sounded as loud.
Add to that the screams of the 9,000 or so people there and you’re in for a veritable wall of sound.
Despite their huge popularity here — the organisers had to open up 200 extra seats — this was the first time the band had performed in Singapore.
Under the cover of this aural assault, Maroon 5 played their hits from their two albums, Songs About Jane and It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, to the sold-out crowd that were oblivious to the potential tinnitus they might have developed during the show.
Singer Adam Levine was in fine form, struttin’ around the stage and playing guitar solos like there was no tomorrow, which, in a sense, was true, since Singapore was to be their last stop on the Asian leg of their world tour. And he was the man the predominantly female crowd came to see.
He got the audience to clap enthusiastically and even snap their fingers quietly while introducing the band, and got everyone up on their feet.
“If you’re not standing up, that’s ... that’s just bulls**t,” he intoned to more rapturous cheers.
The rest of the band — guitarist James Valentine, bass Mickey Madden, drummer Matt Flynn and Carmichael — were content to just pound out song after song with ear-splitting precision, offering sweet relief to the sonic blitzkrieg only on quieter songs like Sunday Morning and She Will Be Loved.
So, was it good? I’ll let you know once the ringing in my ears has stopped. -TODAY
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