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Music

Maroon 5's "Love Somebody" Will Make You Uncomfortable, Like An Adult's Christmas List

Sorry, contemporary adults. You are not allowed to express what you want.

Song: “Love Somebody” by Maroon 5. This week’s biggest mover on the adult contemporary chart, jumping to the 23rd spot.

What it teaches us about being a contemporary adult: Self-expression is fine, just as long as it isn’t a declaration of want.

Some songs are difficult to listen to. I can’t always pin down what it is about these songs that I find so taxing—be it the lyrics, instrumentals, or whatever—but every now and again I hear one and find myself grimacing and exerting an energy and focus usually reserved for actions like putting a fitted sheet on my bed.

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“Love Somebody” by Maroon 5 is one of these songs. I don’t think it’s objectively bad, but I have listened to it about seven times for this article and each time I had to pause it in the middle to get a glass of water or rub my temples. Why? Is it because it’s almost four minutes of nothing but bleeps and bloops? Plenty of songs nowadays are mostly bleeps and bloops and listening to them doesn’t require two Excedrin. Adam Levine’s voice has a distracting, zipper-like timbre that I don’t particularly enjoy, but I don’t hate it either. He kind of sounds like Cher if she were on the receiving end of an enthusiastic bear hug, and that’s not too bad.

No, “Love Somebody” is a hard song to listen to because of its chorus: “I really wanna love somebody, I really wanna dance the night away.” This should be an easy two sentences to listen to—about 65% of popular music up until this point has used those phrases—but it’s not. There’s something grating and upsetting about them and the way they are sung (whined?).

It’s because adults aren’t allowed to express want.

This isn’t the Zen Buddhist tenet of being free from want—far from it. We have to want things; our entire economic structure is dependant on it. We’re just expected to silently pine for everything.

It’s fine for children to outwardly want and crave. This is acceptable because, a.) kids are too stupid to get things for themselves and b.) it makes them believe they are the center of the universe, thus setting them up for the kind of profound and crushing realization that adults love watching young people have: The epiphany of their own unimportance.

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Hearing a grown-up proclaim that they want something is an uncomfortable experience. Everybody knows someone who still makes Christmas wish lists or asks for others to throw them a birthday party. They are viewed as selfish and stunted and if you are one of these people, know that everyone talks this way about you behind your back.

This is why “Love Somebody” is so hard to listen to. Hearing Adam Levine repeatedly beg to “love somebody” and “dance the night away” elicits the same response from me as when people announce their wedding registries: Buy your own damn colander set.

The track isn’t the first song where someone wants something, it just happens to want something with a neutered passiveness that’s hard to get behind. Twisted Sister wants to rock and The Beatles want to hold your hand, but the former is subversive and fun and the latter is direct and specific; they are also both sung with a wink.

“Love Somebody” is frustratingly unaware that once you shake free from childish precociousness, you enter into an agreement with everyone else in the world acknowledging the fact that we’re all selfish pricks, but it’s cool just as long as we don’t make it obvious. A millionaire rock and roll frontman, reality show judge, and high-end jeans entrepreneur has no business asking with meek sincerity for someone to have sex with him and an arena in which to dance.

Sure, the world would be a much more navigable place if everyone just clearly explained the things they wanted, but it would be absolutely insufferable, too.

We are a petty and selfish species, but we sure do respect a monkish devotion to internalizing that fact. That’s why contemporary adults are only permitted to express that they want something until after they have already gotten said thing. For example, when someone talks endlessly about wanting a sports car, it’s seen as tacky and childish. But when someone actually buys a sports car, they deflect criticisms of such a garish and seemingly spontaneous purchase by saying, “As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted this.”

I'm sure there are millions of people who thoroughly enjoy "Love Somebody" and find its repetitive begging thoughtful and honest. Those millions of people will also probably be writing Christmas lists well into their forties.

Nick Greene is the ultimate contemporary adult, mainly because he loves David Lee Roth. He's on Twitter — @nickgreene