Michael Jackson Remembered: Adam Levine on the Rhythm King

Maroon 5's Adam Levine

I never met him, but he was probably the single most important musical influence for me. I would say even before I got into the Beatles, I was into Michael Jackson. If you were living in 1984 and you were five years old, that was your world. Wearing the glove, dancing around the living room. That was your life. He was so all-consuming at the time. That was probably the biggest he ever was. His death has launched a lot of retrospectives and people are celebrating his music, but, I haven't stopped celebrating Michael Jackson since 1984. I've been blasting since the '80s. He was a very rhythmic kind of singer and writer, so his melodies were all very rhythm based. He played off of the drums a lot and I learned how to do that from Michael Jackson. There's no way it could have been from anyone else. He started that whole type of writing.

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Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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