Maroon 5 has been quiet on the music front lately, but that hasn’t stopped their older hits from racking up views on YouTube.
The band’s video for 2019’s “Memories,” directed by Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin, has just passed 1 billion views, making it their fourth entry in YouTube’s Billion Views Club. And another Dobkin-directed clip, the wedding-themed video for 2015’s “Sugar,” has passed 4 billion views.
Maroon 5 has four videos that have reached 1 billion views or more: those two, plus “One More Night” and “Girls Like You.” But unlike those videos, “Memories” doesn’t feature guest stars or any kind of narrative. Instead, it’s just a close-up of a shirtless Adam Levine singing.
The clip is a tribute to the band’s late manager, Jordan Feldstein, who died unexpectedly in 2017 at age 40 from a pulmonary thromboembolism. But although it was inspired by Feldstein — the “Jordi” of the Maroon 5 album of the same name — it’s also been adopted by fans as a way to pay tribute to their own loved ones.
“We knew how much it meant to us in the context of losing Jordi,” Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine told ABC Audio a few years ago. “And we’ve heard that, yeah, it’s become a very important song … for a lot of people.”
“I think the message is so simple and pure, resonates with everybody,” he added. “We’ve all lost people, and especially over the last couple of years [with COVID-19], I think it’s just become more important for people.”
Maroon 5 will resume their Las Vegas residency in May.
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