Even the 'best' songs on the record are chintzy and disappointing, rife with untapped potential. What the hell happened here? Hands All Over was middling as hell, a significant dip in quality when compared to its thoroughly satisfying predecessors, but compared to *this*, Hands All Over is a pop music masterpiece. Through the simple but damning act of chasing trends and riding their coattails, Overexposed is already painfully dated whereas Songs About Jane still sounds good almost twenty years later. Anything I could say about "Sad" has already been said by its title alone, "Wipe Your Eyes" is a messy, over-amplified burst of meaningless noise, "Wasted Years" is literally just a terrible version of "The Sun" from the immeasurably-superior Songs About Jane - same key and everything - and "Fortune Teller" has the rawest, most shameless form of selling out on the entire record in the form of f*cking dubstep with its lurching, wobbly bassline and robotic four-on-the-floor drum beat. The so-called "Sly Stone-meets-Eurythmics synth hook" of "Love Somebody" is mawkishly milquetoast and insincere, its empty verses and basic synth arpeggios sounding more like drug-addled mumbling than a legitimate 'hook'. "Payphone" is a brainless toe-tapper with 'hip hop beats and piano hooks' that might as well have come out of a "baby's first music loops" pack, and that's not even getting into the utterly brain-dead and tone-deaf feature by Wiz Khalifa, a choice that adds nothing to the otherwise hokey, inspirational, and frankly f*ckin white sound of the song. That dull, lobotomized sound seeps it way into every single track on this record, ruining the potentially-promising musical ideas in the process and turning them into mindless, poppy mush. Were Maroon 5 excited and passionate about their new 'sound' on Overexposed? If so, it doesn't show in the slightest - Overexposed sounds like a band of lobotomites performing hip and cool muzak made for da young'ins and teenyboppers of 2012, with formulaic, factory-made, and conveniently trailer-and-commercial-friendly "songs". Whatever they're singing about is given no weight whatsoever, utterly castrated and neutralized by paper-thin songwriting, run-of-the-mill production, a downright bored performance by Adam Levine, and the alarmingly likely feeling that nobody involved with Overexposed actually gave that much of a damn about any of it. This singular musical moment - doubtlessly a moment that nobody in the studio really thought about, not with this level of deep analysis, anyway - perfectly summarizes the problems with Maroon 5 as a band these days. then why are they sung so god damn softly? With falsetto - one of the softest singing techniques on the scene - at the end of the last 'oh'? How is that 'screaming'? How does Adam Levine's bland, clean, stilted delivery of those oh-oh-oh's and the utter lack of anything happening in the background supposed to feel "like a tragedy, like a dark comedy"? What's "tragic" about a squeaky-clean pop song? Do these lyrics even mean anything at all? Or are they nothing more than borderline filler to give Adam Levine a reason to make some noises with his mouth? The lyrics to the first verse of "The Man Who Never Lied" go something like this: "In the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, screaming at each other, screaming at each other like: oh, oh, ohhhh." Now, given this immediate lyrical content, "The Man Who Never Lied" is clearly meant to paint a picture of a broken relationship, but here's the thing - if those oh-oh-oh's are meant to represent Adam Levine and his seemingly tumultuous relationship with this woman. Let's go against the grain for a moment and conduct a little musical analysis. Review Summary: I know the song I'm singing is not your favorite kind.