JORDI "had no connection, no faith or direction"

“Sometimes, I feel out of my mind, but I’m not”

JORDI (Deluxe)

Maroon 5

Available on all leading music platforms

11 June 2021

14 Songs

Jordi (Deluxe) by Maroon 5 is the band's 7th studio album and was released on the 11th of June, 2021. It consists of 14 tracks and features multiple music artists such as Meghan Thee Stallion, Blackbear, Stevie Nicks, and many more.

Jhanya: JORDI is catchy and full of cookie-cutter pop songs. But for an album that is supposed to be about "Memories", and is dedicated to their late manager Jordan "Jordi" Feldstein, JORDI just lacked so much emotion and substance. It was instead filled with common radio-ready pop, beats, and repetitive (and often-times irritating) hooks. Personally, it’s what made this album unlistenable as a whole.

Ria: I didn’t even know that JORDI is dedicated to their late manager. Having said this, I can totally say that the emotional substance really lacked. Quite disappointing, honestly.

Jhanya: At the beginning, Beautiful Mistakes, Lost, Echo and Remedy would have you bobbing your head to the beat, and even singing along a few times with their catchy melody. But as the same catchy beat goes on without meaning and emotion, the listeners will slowly start zoning out by Seasons or One Light, and the music would seem like noise instead. A great example of the meaningless lyrics is this line from Button, “Rain down like fire; Come push the button and turn me on”. It’s so lame and superficial ugh. (I swear, I could not have been more annoyed at hearing this lyric right after listening to the overplayed tune of Memories TWICE.)

I mean, kudos to them for being able to make a banger pop album, but nothing was new. AT ALL. Even though the album was a mixed bag of tunes, they all lacked the same charm as the band's top hits like Moves Like Jagger and Sugar. Sure, it's hard to create something original and new nowadays, but they could've at least tried to do so. The fact that they also heavily relied on guest artists to add personality to their songs (ex. Echo and Remedy) prove even more how much of a “blank canvas” the music they produced is. Maroon 5 wanted to please as many people as they could with the songs in JORDI through this method and it ended up holding back the majority of its quality. It's as if they're still trying to remain relevant as a band in the ever-growing music industry. Oh, wait. They are 🙃

Ria: Maroon 5 was one of the first few bands I listened to when I was young, and I actually like most of their music. However, with this album, my view of them just shattered. I mean, where did the people who wrote She Will be Loved go? Are they all stuck in the past? I feel like JORDI would have done a lot better in the 2000s. That time was the peak of pop songs and most of the songs in JORDI, I think, would’ve fit right in.

Redeeming qualities of the album would be the songs Lost, Remedy, Nobody’s Love, and Memories. Honestly, though, I feel like I liked the latter two songs because they were released way before the album was and I probably listened to it too much to make me like it. SHDLSKFJSD Lost is a cool song for me. I really liked the melody and lyrics of the song. The instrumentation matched to it also works well hand-in-hand. Similar to this, Remedy is also a song that I loved in the album.

Jhanya: Same as Ria, I liked the first few songs in the album such as Lost, Echo (mainly because of Blackbear), and Remedy, along with Nobody’s Love. As for the rest of the tracks, however, I'm sorry but I got tired of Adam Levine's falsettos in this album. And I've been listening to Maroon 5, FOR YEARS (trust me ;-;). Personally, I think this is really just a feeble attempt by the group to stay as commercially relevant as they can given the many up and rising music artists nowadays. Ngl, JORDI genuinely makes me nervous for the upcoming pop albums that are to come in the future.

Ria: Overall, this album could’ve been so much more. I feel like this pop-y album has nothing new to it. It’s just the same as every other pop-centered album. I also feel like they might’ve been trying too hard for this album to be successful. Like what Jhanya said, this album feels like an attempt to stay relevant in the music industry. I feel really bad because this album has tainted my image of Maroon 5 with their previous banger albums. such a shame