Seven Miles From the Sun, Seven Feet from Adam Levine
By: Connor Lenahan
As I write this, I am sitting in a parking lot. I have not been able to use my laptop all day due to travel. This is because I had to be in Philadelphia to visit one of my doctors regarding my bone condition. That isn’t what matters
What matters is that I still want to inform the world that tonight I will be seeing Maroon 5 in concert, which means that I will be seeing Adam Levine in person.
There are two reasons why I am excited about this. One is simple, and one is a bit more complex.
Reason #1: The Simple Reason
Adam Levine is one of the most infuriatingly attractive men on the face of the Earth. Words cannot properly express my jealousy of him, but I will try.
Not only does Adam Levine look like a movie star, which is reason enough to be jealous of the guy, but he also sings like an angel. Seriously, just listen to “Sunday Morning” and try not to fall in love with him.
I was met on my first log onto Facebook the day that Levine announced his engagement to some Victoria’s Secret model, the name of which I’m unsure of but am confident would be worth a triple word score in Scrabble, with scores of high school and college girls lamenting his unavailability.
Meanwhile I’m still single and the world still turns.
Not that I’m bitter or anything… I can sing too you know…
Reason 2: The More Complex Reason
In 2002 Maroon 5 released their critically and commercially successful debut Songs About Jane. The album includes some truly great songs like “This Love,” “She Will Be Loved,” “The Sun,” “Shiver” and “Sunday Morning.” The album was rereleased in late 2003 and then rode “This Love” to the top of the charts a d the subsequent stardom.
Despite only being 10 years old at the time, I remember Maroon 5 being a pop hit and well liked throughout any and all social circles I was involved in. And yes, we were heavy music critics in 4th Grade.
I do also remember the band disappearing until 2007. Admittedly this was because I didn’t understand downtime in between albums and touring schedules and math. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I remember sitting in my living room watching them debut “Makes Me Wonder” off of their sophomore effort It Won’t Be Soon Before Long.
Songs About Jane and It Won’t Be Soon Before Long are far and away my favorite Maroon 5 albums but I like Hands All Over and Overexposed only they lose points in my book for sounding more poppy than their original alternative rock sound, but that’s nitpicking honestly.
Here is the more complex reason: Adam Levine, while moving into more pop music territory and establishing himself as a star aside from Maroon 5 (“Moves Like Jagger” being evidence of both) has become the basically the biggest rock star on the planet.
Think about the days of old (Read: 80s) and the huge personalities that were frontmen of the biggest bands on the planet (David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, Vince Neil, etc). Maroon 5 is arguably the biggest band on the planet right now, with Levine’s stardom heavily exceeding the band’s. Simply using this idea (and I apologize, I don’t have the Internet to fully back this up) and the precedent of bands like Van Halen (because Maroon 5 is still a rock band, sort of in the same way Usher is an R&B singer a decade after Confessions) then we come to Adam Levine as the biggest rock star in the country.
So I am going to see a definitive artist for pop culture in 2013, a sex symbol, and the singer of a few of my all time favorite songs, and possibly cry tears of joy during it.
Yeah, I’m pumped.
(Sorry for the lack of formatting, multimedia & whatnot, I did this all off my iPhone, hope it turned out okay.)
Connor Lenahan (@ConnorLenahan) is the founder and editor-in-chief of Connorlenahan.com. He is a freshman at Boston University, majoring in journalism.