Moves Like Jagger, Payphone, and now One More Night. Love or hate Maroon 5, one thing is undisputable – Adam Levine and his supporting cast of hitmakers know how to craft hits with staying power.
Take their latest chart-topper, One More Night for example. It just finished up a 9 week stint atop the Billboard Hot 100 (replaced by Rihanna’s Diamonds), and to date has hit #1 on 7 charts in 5 countries. What’s really amazing, though, is the fact that it was strong enough to hold off the Gangnam Style surge, keeping PSY locked at the #2 position on the Hot 100 for 7 consecutive weeks. This was no small feat considering that to-date Gangnam Style has hit #1 on 30 charts in 29 countries.
So just what was it about One More Night that kept PSY from performing topless as promised if he hit #1 on the Hot 100?
First, the scene was set for success. Maroon 5 were still riding high and in the public eye from the massive success gained from their previous chart-topper, Payphone (which itself built off of the success of Moves Like Jagger and the Levine/Gym Class Heroes collaboration Stereo Hearts). And then there was Adam Levine’s visibility on The Voice, which kept him in front of millions of viewers on a weekly basis.
With the stage set, it now all came down to the song itself. Levine enlisted a who’s who of today’s top Pop hitmakers including Max Martin, Savan Kotecha and Shellback to craft a song that both embraced the Maroon 5 sound that their fans had come to love and expect all the while charting new territory with the Reggae backed music and vibe. What they wound up with was an ultra-infectious, genre mashing song that stood out from the mainstream Pop pack.
As for the song itself, there were a host of key factors that played a vital role in its success, including frequent sectional turnover that kept the listener engaged with something new entering the mix about once every 0:20, the fusion of modern Pop & Reggae elements that broadened the song’s demographic reach potential, an exceptionally infectious & memorable vocal melody in EACH section of the song, and universal, engaging lyrics that utilized imagery, action & emotion that engrossed the listener in the storyline, to name just a few of many.
But the main reason why One More Night gets stuck in your head and is almost impossible to shake is due to the abundance of repetition utilized throughout the song. This includes sectional and cross-sectional lyric and vocal melody repetition, backing music repetition, and the ultra-infectious, memorable “oo,oo,oo…” hook that repeats throughout the song in various manifestations (via the vocals, synth and bass),
In the end, though, like I say, it all comes down to the song’s overall vibe and how it makes the listener FEEL. Star power, hype and promotion will provide the breadth of the song’s potential reach, and the internal (craft) factors will “package” the song for the masses. But once you start listening, it’s the SOUL of the song that ultimately needs to connect and resonate, and One More Night has Soul.
To read the complete One More Night Deconstructed report and gain access to the Hit Songs Deconstructed archive, go to
www.hitsongsdeconstructed.com/onemorenightDavid Penn
Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Hit Songs Deconstructed
