It Won't Be Soon Before Long

Maroon 5 | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 22, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: A&M / Octone Records
• ASIN: B000P2A256
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (269 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #490 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #5 in Music > Music Deals > More Titles at Least 25% Off
  • #31 in Music > Pop > Adult Alternative

Track Listings

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

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Sometimes it's O.K.--even important--to put aside your reluctance to embrace artists who make teenage girls scream. It happened in 2006, when Justin Timberlake scraped the sludge off pop and left something shiny behind, and it's happening again in 2007 with Maroon 5. It Won't Be Soon Before Long, the L.A. band's sophomore studio disc, rode in on a crest of hype and crumpled expectations--fan reports had it that Adam Levine & Co. scrapped their signature pop-soul sound for something harder and darker. Not so. Shades of Prince, Hall & Oates, and Sting still color the Maroon sound (check out the spectacularly fizzy "Little of Your Time," as well as the first single, "Makes Me Wonder," a song catchier than fire), but they're made ever fainter here by the clamping down of five guys on what is essentially the most distinctive pop sound to emerge from a single band since the Bee Gees squealed into the mid-'70s. It Won't Be Soon squares hip-hop sensibilities ("Wake Up Call") with rock ones ("If I Never See Your Face Again") and stormy moods ("Can't Stop") with bittersweet ballads ("Better That We Break"). It's a disc destined to defy detractors and go on to greatness, elevating the credibility of teenage girls for years to come. --Tammy La Gorce

Product 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

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Live Friday the 13th

1.22.03.Acoustic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

93 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Am I the only person who EXPECTED a different album than SAJ II?, May 29, 2007

By 

Michael T. Rognlien (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: It Won't Be Soon Before Long (Audio CD)

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.

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Band that Beat the Curse of the 'Best New Artist' Grammy, June 19, 2007

By 

Thomas D. Ryan "American Hit Network" (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: It Won't Be Soon Before Long (Audio CD)

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

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Certainly a difficult recommendation, May 25, 2007

By 

Vash the Stampede (K-Town, TN) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: It Won't Be Soon Before Long (Audio CD)

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.