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| |  | CDs | Home » » It Won't Be Soon Before Long | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | Global neo-soul rock superstars Maroon 5 are back with their much-anticipated sophomore album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long. The follow-up to the 10x platinum, Grammy-winning Songs About Jane will be "sexier and stronger," according to frontman Adam Levine, who looked to '80s icons such as Prince, Michael Jackson, and Talking Heads for inspiration. Recorded at home in Los Angeles with producers Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple, Eminem), Mark "Spike" Stent (Bjork, Keane, Gwen Stefani), Mark Endert (Madonna, Fiona Apple), and Eric Valentine (Queens of the Stone Age, Nickel Creek), the album promises to be a louder take on the pop sounds of their first effort. "It's definitely aggressive, upbeat and pounding," says Levine. More Maroon 5
Songs About Jane | 
Live Friday the 13th | 
1.22.03.Acoustic | Maroon 5 Photos | | | Product Details: | | | Audio CD Release Date:
| May 22, 2007 | | Studio:
| A&M / Octone Records | | Number Of Discs:
| 1 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 287 reviews |
| | | Track Listing: | | | 1. | Back At Your Door | | 2. | Makes Me Wonder | | 3. | Little Of Your Time | | 4. | Wake Up Call | | 5. | Won't Go Home Without You | | 6. | Nothing Lasts Forever | | 7. | Can't Stop | | 8. | Goodnight Goodnight | | 9. | Not Falling Apart | | 10. | Kiwi | | 11. | Better That We Break | |
| | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 287 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
99 of 108 found the following review helpful:
 Am I the only person who EXPECTED a different album than SAJ II?May 30, 2007
By Michael T. Rognlien
Reading reviews from people who go to great lengths to say how "over it" they are when a band (god forbid) changes their musical direction a bit and produces a follow-up to a hugely successful album that dares to be different than its predecessor crack me up.
If the only Maroon 5 set you ever want to hear is SAJ, then don't ever buy any others, just keep listening to that. I loved Songs About Jane, I loved their live acoustic CD's, and I love their new CD. So what if a lot of their lyrics are about love gone wrong - we live in a country where more relationships fail than flourish, so most of us can relate to the lyrics. That they are able to capture the emotions associated with it (anger, bitterness, revenge, sadness, acceptance) in such a wide variety of musical styles speaks to the strength of their creativity, and that they channel some greats in the process (yes, Won't Go Home does have an Every Breath You Take-like guitar riff) is awesome.
I won't go song-by-song, but there are so many great tracks on this CD - catchy, lyrically clever, tightly produced - that the fact that there are a couple filler tracks is largely unimportant. You can't find hardly anyone who doesn't hum along to Makes Me Wonder, and I'd venture to say that several more tracks from this CD - If I Never See Your Face Again, Little of Your Time, Won't Go Home Without You, Can't Stop, Kiwi, Back at Your Door - are also major hit single potential.
There's no point in whining that your favorite best-kept-secret band hit the bigtime and is writing for a larger audience - all of their material they've done has been great in different ways, and this CD is going to be huge. Can't wait to see 'em live again.
35 of 37 found the following review helpful:
The Band that Beat the Curse of the 'Best New Artist' GrammyJun 19, 2007
By Thomas D. Ryan
"American Hit Network"
Normally (although not deliberately), I tend to ignore bands like Maroon 5. A bluntly commercial band with this much corporate support does not need my backing, so I usually leave it alone and let the marketplace decide for itself. The world at large seems to understand Avril Lavigne, Nickelback and Fall Out Boy a lot better than I do anyway, so voicing my opinion about the musical value of these acts would feel like screaming at the wall. Usually, I simply look the other way, but I've been listening to "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" for a few weeks now, and it has me believing that Maroon 5 can justify the hype.
Maroon 5's last album, "Songs About Jane," may have been released in 2002, but I didn't hear a note of it until two years later, when the relentless push from the band's backers finally ignited the jet fuel that lifted the band to stardom. Apparently, I wasn't alone in this regard, since the band took home a Grammy award for best new artist three years later, in 2005. Naturally, that brought them a lot of attention, but I figured they would suffer the same fate as many previous `Best New Artist' winners and vanish into the night sky. "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" renders my prediction obsolete. The production is damn near perfect, but in a mid-`80s, Quincy Jones kind of way that often gets in the way of allowing the band to establish its own identity. There is a slick, funky sheen to the best songs, and vocalist Adam Levine dishes out melodies that are flawlessly polished to a full luster. Imagine Maxwell covering a Michael Jackson hit with an ace rock band for support, and you'll get close to the essence of this song collection.
The subject matter is also intriguing. There are lots of cheating songs on the disk, and lots of lyrics that will break the hearts of hormone-addled romantics. If his words are remotely autobiographical, then Levine could be the poster boy for the lovelorn, even when his sentiments are shopworn and clichéd; on "Won't Go Home Without You," he knows the girl was right to ditch him, but swears that he needs "one more chance to make it right." On "Nothing Lasts Forever," he sings "I love you but I'm letting go" while "Can't Stop (Thinking About You)" is self-explanatory. "Wake Up Call" is a bit more blatant - "Caught you in the morning with another one in my bed. Don't you care about me anymore?" Umm, I don't think so, dude, but don't worry about it, because there are millions of fans to help to ease your pain. This'll sell zillions, and I can understand why it will. B+ Tom Ryan
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 Certainly a difficult recommendationMay 25, 2007
By Vash the Stampede
2.5 (Man I wish Amazon.com would invest in decimals.)
When Maroon 5 hit the scene in 2002, heads turned and mothers were throwing babies from the bleachers as this Jazz/Funk/Rock band tore up the charts with "Songs about Jane" and it's first single, "Harder to Breathe." Now, in 2007, they've decided to expand themselves, and, in case you read to deeply into that statement, I'm using it as loosely as I can.
It is, in all honesty, a typical sophomore effort. You've got throwback tracks (Wake Up Call), you've got expansion tracks (If I Never See Your Face Again) , you've got influence tracks (Makes Me Wonder), and you've got covers (Kiwi), but, in the case of Maroon 5, what you don't have is mood. Gone is the moody, catchy Maroon 5 we heard during "The Sun" or "Sunday Morning." Gone is the emergence and aggression that were "Harder to Breathe" and "Shiver". What we are left with is Maroon 5 ala Disco-Pop. Jazzy Pop worked with SAJ and, especially if you're a fan, a majority of the songs stuck with you because of distinction and precision. "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" features the band WAY out on a limb, attempting something new, and coming up repetitive, entirely over-produced, and way too poppy for it's own good, lacking mood in place of sonic differentiality. For example, it's hard to emote and relate to Levine's lyrics when the tempo is 135 bpm, and Outkast is wondering if they copyrighted "Hey Ya" or not. It's a clash between emotive lyrics (sometimes humorous even) and up-tempo, disco-heavy, synth-laden noise as filler.
I'm not saying to avoid this record because it DOES have it's highlights ("Wake Up Call", "Better if we Break"), but DO NOT buy it expecting "Songs about Jane". It IS artistic progression, and I applaud that on every level in every forum, but, in my opinion, it's certainly in a difficult direction, too north-east to south-westerly admire.
23 of 31 found the following review helpful:
Over Produced but Solid.May 22, 2007
By A*
This album doesn't come close to "Songs about Jane." The new disc is washed, scrubbed and polished to the point where you just want to hear some raw emotion out of Levine's voce but you never do. But instead what you do get is smartly written, smarmy pop gems that is still better than most of anything else on the radio these days.
All over the disc you get snippets of other artists that have influenced them and that mostly comes from the 80's. You get a Prince tune: "Kiwi," with its metaphorical lyrics, "Goodnight Goodnight," which sounds as if it fell out of Stevie Wonder's amazing songbook and the stunning "Better that we Break." Maroon 5's a great band, but here it seems as if they are going after a new audience while trying to sustain their old but without branching out as artists. They can handle more than what they are doing on this disc. Levine at times, treads the same waters as he did in "Songs about Jane."
8 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 It's ok!!!May 22, 2007
By Nse Ette
Maroon 5 return with the follow up to their hugely successful debut "Songs about Jane", and are off to a good start so far, with lead off single "Makes me wonder" (in a similar mould to "This love") already #1 on Billboard.
It was always going to be tough to top "Songs.." and they don't. However, they continue in the same rock/pop/funk direction as their debut, though this time around the songs don't jump at you immediately.
Other standouts (besides the incredibly catchy "Makes me wonder") are "If I never see your face again" (great guitar intro), the upbeat "Little of your time", the equally energetic "Can't stop", the more midtempo "Not falling apart" (with a nice chugging bassline), the Michael Jackson-like "Wake up call", and the ballads; the "She will be loved" clone "Won't go home without you", "Goodnight goodnight", and the retro sounding "Back at your door".
But even these don't come close to the standouts from "Songs.." and that's the problem, a lack of catchy songs and nothing new. There's nothing here that we haven't heard better from their debut. A very good case of playing it safe. The album will no doubt sell in the millions.
P.S. Look out for the bonus tracks some of which are better than some album tracks;
"Infatuation" (lovely ballad)
"Until you're over me" (catchy upbeat number sung in falsetto, both available on the Australian edition)
"Figure it out" (a mellow to raging funk/rocker with nice kettle effects)
"Losing my mind" (nice rock ballad)
"Miss you love you".
See all 287 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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