Jordi
| Maroon 5
Jordi
Jordi (stylized in all caps) is the seventh studio album by American band Maroon 5. It was released on June 11, 2021, through 222, Interscope and Polydor Records. The album features guest appearances from Megan Thee Stallion, Blackbear, Stevie Nicks, Bantu, H.E.R., YG, and late rappers Juice Wrld and Nipsey Hussle. The deluxe edition of the album features additional guest appearances from Anuel AA, Tainy, and Jason Derulo. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
Show All-
The Guardian
pop at its most shallow and calculating.
-
Rolling Stone
Stevie Nicks, Megan Thee Stallion, and H.E.R. stop by to try to help Adam Levine elevate his game, but the lane remains the same.
-
Pitchfork
Maroon 5’s seventh album sets out to experiment beyond their comfort zone. It sounds like a band trying desperately to appeal to as many markets as possible.
-
Paste Magazine
The new album from the pop superstars breaks impressively little ground.
-
NME
A bulging guestlist – Stevie Nicks! Megan Thee Stallion! – belies the very ordinariness of the band's seventh album, which soars at its most introspective.
-
Sputnik Music
Even though Maroon 5 have long been staples of grocery-store-core, Jordi might have driven them from even that very sad niche thanks to its questionable lyrics. In an ongoing battle between the likes of The Script, Train, OneRepublic, and Maroon 5 for the worst pop band in existence, Jordi could be the ace card that sees these guys take home that figurative prize. Take a bow, Mr. Levine.
-
Atwood Magazine
Maroon 5 don’t deviate from their go-to formula too much on ‘JORDI,’ but they still deliver a record that’s easily enjoyable and full of positive chemistry with a bunch of well-selected guest artists.
-
Ratings Game Music
The songs end up blending together as you’re listening and making for good background noise at best. In the end, JORDI isn’t a bad album. It’s just not a good one.
-
Vinyl Chapters
Although Maroon 5 is slowly but surely finding their footing again, their latest studio album Jordi still suffers from the same problems we are used to.
-
Black Boy Bulletin
JORDI is the final piece of proof that Maroon 5 needs to decide exactly what they want to be. If the answer to that question is “a solo artist masquerading as a band that sings empty lyrics over derivative trap-influenced beats,” then maybe they’ve reached the end of the road.
-
The Young Folks
Perhaps I should just stop hoping that Maroon 5 will ever return to the kind of soaring pop choruses, funky, blues guitars and unique lyrical takes that launched their career back in 2002. Jordi is proof that they’ve turned a corner on that part of their career and will likely never turn back, which, to me, is a realization that is just as disappointing as the album.
-
Music Matters Media
It’s true that Maroon 5 has become a “singles” band since the 2010s, but cramming eleven songs with “single” potential onto one album causes some of them to get lost in the fray. With an arsenal of heartfelt and emotional topics to write about, JORDI still turned out to be as bland as white bread. Overall, Maroon 5 has produced a perfectly fine pop album that neither impresses or offends.
-
Hotpress
It's hit-and-miss at best, but there are some golden pop moments on JORDI if you give it enough of a chance.
-
The Arts Desk
The emptiness of it all is genuinely harrowing – the sort of thing that JG Ballard-loving avant gardists strain to articulate.
-
mxdwn Music
Jordi is full of dominating features and is true to the synthesized sounds of trendy pop. Evidently Maroon 5 is clawing towards all the most popular sounds to intrigue as many markets as one band can. The tone of each song jumps from one to another, making it almost unpredictable as an album overall. However, at the same time, the pop feel and grab for trendy, relatable lyrics sounds quite formulated and predictable. The one common theme to take away from Jordi is the respectable intention of acknowledging the darker sides of life.
-
UK Music Reviews
With the involvement of forty nine writers, seven of whom were involved in the construction of Memories, the tone of each song jumps from one to another, making it an almost unpredictable album to listen to. And despite this army of A list writers and producers, there isn’t anything on this album to rival the inescapable punch of Sugar or Moves Like Jaggar. The songs are there to be listened to and in the end Jordi isn’t a bad album. It’s just not a great one.
-
Stereoboard
After all these years, Maroon 5 are still masters of mass consumption radio anthems, these days served with a side of appearances from relevant artists of the moment.
-
The Upcoming
Maroon 5 have stuck around for a while, but such consistency cannot compensate for the banality of much of this new release. Levine’s nasal falsetto prevails, as if automated in songs that only find character in guest artists, who are scattered left, right and centre with confused purpose. Jordi is abundant with nondescript background beats, serving summer season textures and danceability on a loop. But it raises the question of whether pop ever actually progresses, especially when the same tropes return like the tides – people-pleasing, but certainly not impressing.
-
All Music
Only five of the album's 14 songs are credited to Maroon 5 alone, a move that helps Jordi play like a deftly sequenced cross-genre playlist, a feeling accentuated by how "Memories" is present in its original mix and a remix featuring Nipsey Hussle & YG. Levine and company aren't the focus here, they're the connective tissue on a softly amorphous album that sounds entirely like latter-day Maroon 5 without ever quite seeming to belong to them.
-
Sanity Blog
Dedicated to their manager Jordan Feldstein who passed away in 2017, this record is all about new directions and about being unapologetically who they want to be as a band with no regrets, and that is the message to take away from this album.
-
Spectrum Culture
Another in a line of Maroon 5’s creative bankruptcy despite being dedicated to their late manager, JORDI barely feels like an album; It sounds more like a financial scheme dressed up as heartless pop.
-
Clash Magazine
If anything, ‘Jordi’ is indicative of Maroon 5’s continuing rise into the pop heavens. As Adam Levine rightly pointed out, they’re one of the few groups left standing from their generation – yet it’s come at a cost. Continual evolutions has pushed them away from their roots, feeling less like a band and more like a committee, marking out different strategies without truly owning one themselves.
Rate This Album and Leave Your Comments