Maroon 5's "One More Night": Why This Song Sucks
[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.]
Song: Maroon 5's "One More Night"
History: "One More Night" is from Maroon 5's mostly supposed-to-be-saucy-but-mostly-forgettable Overexposed album, which, FYI, does not include naked pictures of Adam Levine in the liner notes so don't buy it if that's what you were thinking. You will be way disappointed when you open it*.
*That happened to a friend of mine. Not me. I just went on the Internet and looked for naked pictures of Adam Levine like a normal human because I have a little thing called sophistication.
Atmospherics: Like if the band watched the Marley documentary on the tour bus one evening alone, then someone was like, "Dudes, WE SHOULD TOTES MAKE A POP-ROCK REGGAE SONG," and nobody else on the bus had the gall to say, "No, no you should fucking totes NOT make a pop-rock reggae song."
Scientific Analysis: There are two instances when it's a good idea to incorporate heavy reggae-ness into your music:
1. When you're the superheroically intimidating Z-Ro. Because when you're superheroically intimidating, you can do whatthefuckever you want. If Z-Ro came to my house right now, kicked the door in, walked up the stairs, urinated on my two five-year-olds, punted my two-week-old son out the window, then punched my wife in the nose, I'd be like, "...Z-Ro... hey... um... Oh, nothing, I just wanted to say that it was cool how you kicked my newborn son through the window. Did you used to be an NFL kicker because -- oh, oh you're hungry? Okay, what do you want on your sandwich?"
2. When you're Jamaican.
That's it. Those are the only times. (Fuck you, Matisyahu and fuck you, Guys That Play Hacky Sack.) Most people know this, which means Levine -- have you ever seen him on The Voice btw? he is such a sneaky weasel -- resorted to devilish trickery to get this song okayed: He got naked.
I suspected that there might've been a correlation between how convincing Levine can be versus how much clothes he's wearing, but I had no idea how effective it was. To wit, a simple experiment: I listened to "One More Night" six times in a row on two separate occasions, once while staring at a picture of a clothed Levine on my computer and once with a picture of him where I was thisclose to seeing his unseeables. The results were staggering. An artistic reenactment:

Good thing I went to college, or else I wouldn't be doing this work that is so integral to all of everything
The information again, this time in How Convincing Is Adam Levine vs. How Naked Is Adam Levine graph form:
































