If you’re feeling 2017’s general mood is just a little too on the buoyant side, you’ll welcome news from US commentary site Quartz, which has used the Billboard charts to calculate a list of the most popular bands of the 21st century in the US. They have come to the conclusion that this ultimate accolade falls to none other than Maroon 5: a band who, 13 years ago, were accused of being manufactured when they broadly weren’t. In 2017, they float on a cloud of tacit authenticity despite now working with more bluechip pop collaborators than the average former member of 1D, which is to say Liam.
Maroon 5 have had more than twice as many US Top 10 hits as Nickelback, and three times as many as Coldplay, Creed, Imagine Dragons or Fall Out Boy. And those aren’t just band names selected at random from the Absolute Radio playlist, by the way; those are the century’s other most popular bands, and if you’re questioning the lack of diversity on offer, don’t worry because they sit alongside the likes of Train, the Fray, Matchbox 20 and 3 Doors Down. It’s easy sometimes to look at 2017 and ask: how we got to this stage. To question how did all this happen? But it was there all along, wasn’t it? It was there, like the answers to so many of life’s other big questions, in the pop charts. Moves Like Jagger was a banger though, to be fair.
