Monday Music "Payphone" by Maroon 5

 I normally don't have many songs by newer acts because I consider the new music scene to be "Crap", the older Music like from my decade the 80's to be awesome, and I grew up with the super bands of the 1970's with Wolfman Jack hooking the songs on AFN in Frankfurt Germany in the mid 1970's.  It was a good time to experience music, Hey I even liked Disco..

      I am still running my backup theme "What songs would I play if Sirius/XM would let me host a segment if songs that I could play over and over again and these songs I can do, especially if I am on my motorcycle, and the song is on my MP3 player, it is easier to replay and you don't wear our the record.   My Bugaloo theme will be back in a couple of weeks, it is still fattening up in the pasture after being rode hard like a lady of the evening and the fleet is in.

     I decided to roll with "Payphone" by Maroon 5, I don't know where I heard this song at, but for some reason it resonated with me so I got a bootleg copy of it a few years ago when you can get "free MP3" songs on the internet.

    

"Payphone" is a song by American pop rock band Maroon 5 featuring American rapper Wiz Khalifa. It was released on April 16, 2012, as the lead single from their fourth studio album, Overexposed (2012). The song was written by Adam Levine, Benny Blanco, Ammar Malik, Robopop, Shellback, and Khalifa, and produced by Blanco and Shellback. The song is a pop ballad and describes a romance that ended abruptly. It has received favorable reviews from music critics, who praised the catchy melody and named it "a radio success", but some others dismissed its title and Khalifa's appearance. 

 

The official music video was directed by Samuel Bayer, and finds Levine taking down some bank robbers and attempting to become the "hero" in a hail of bullets as he makes his escape, steals a gun from a robber, and then gets mistaken for one. Because of this, he must escape from a fleet of policemen, which he does with ease. The video was positively received from critics, who considered it an enjoyable mini-action film. The video was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Best Pop Video, but lost out to "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction. In July 2012, "Payphone" was named Song of the Summer for 2012 by Idolator.

On the Billboard Hot 100, the song debuted at the number three spot before peaking at number two. The song sold 493,000 copies in its first week, becoming the best sales week for a digital song by a group and also the eleventh-best sales week overall. It peaked at number one in Canada for eight consecutive weeks. It also topped the charts in the United Kingdom, making it the band's first-ever single to do so. "Payphone" was the world's fifth best-selling single of 2012 with 9.5 million copies sold.

 

The song was written by Maroon 5's lead singer Adam Levine, along with Ammar Malik, Robopop, Benny Blanco, Shellback, and Wiz Khalifa, while production, programming, additional bass, keys, acoustic guitars and background vocals were provided by Shellback and Blanco. Levine, Blanco, Shellback, and Malik also wrote the band's previous single "Moves Like Jagger".The writing process started when Malik and Robopop constructed a piano line and demo track that Blanco compiled into a proper melody.They gave it to Levine, who wrote the lyrics. Blanco also wanted to throw a wrench into the Maroon 5 works by adding hip-hop flavor to its sound, "I love when things don't make sense, like, 'Holy fuck!' You don't hear him on the song at all. I like when bands dip into a whole different genre." For this, he commissioned Wiz Khalifa (whose singles "No Sleep" and the then-upcoming "Work Hard, Play Hard", Blanco has produced) to write and rap a verse on "Payphone". In an interview with Rolling Stone, Blanco told that five minutes before Khalifa arrived at the studio, he prepared "the sound beds for the finger snap-driven portion of the jam". However, producer Max Martin, who was the executive producer of Overexposed, adjusted the chorus, because he felt it should be a "little different".

In the United States, the song debuted on the Pop Songs chart at number 21, making it the highest-charting debut by a group since 'N Sync's "Pop" debuted at the same position in June 2001. "Payphone" peaked at number one on the Billboard's Pop Songs chart, becoming their fourth number one. On Pop Songs, the group makes it to back-to-back toppers, as its last entry, "Moves Like Jagger," featuring Christina Aguilera, reigned for six weeks beginning in October. The band had likewise led consecutively with its first two number ones, "This Love" (three weeks) and "She Will Be Loved" (four) in 2004. Wiz Khalifa, featured on the pop edit of "Payphone," scores his first Mainstream Top 40 number one.^[29] On the Adult Pop Songs chart, "Payphone" debuted at number 17, the highest-ever debut by a group and the third-highest overall. It also topped the Adult Pop Songs, becoming their fifth leader. On Adult Pop Songs, Maroon 5 - whose number one ledger on the list includes its four Pop Songs leaders plus 2010's "Misery" - ties Nickelback for the most commanding titles among groups in the chart's 16-year history.

"Payphone" sold 493,000 digital downloads in its first week and subsequently debuted at number one on the Hot Digital Songs chart, the best sales week ever for a digital song by a group, surpassing The Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow", which topped the chart with sales of 464,000 units in April 2009. It is also the eighth-best sales week overall since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking digital downloads in 2003. The song debuted at number three on the Billboard Hot 100. It failed to reach number one, peaking at number two on that chart for six non-consecutive weeks, being blocked from the top spot by Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" and Carly Rae Jepsen's smash hit of the summer, "Call Me Maybe". On its 18th week in the top ten, "Payphone" dropped to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first time the song was not a part of the top five. It also spent its first 19 weeks in the top ten. Over 5 million copies of the song had been sold in the United States by March 2013, and as of June 2014, it has sold 5,510,000 copies in the US.

On the Canadian Hot 100 chart, the song debuted at number 2, for the issue dated May 5, 2012. The following week, the song fell to number 3, where it remained for a further week.The following week, the song climbed to number 2 and on the chart issue dated June 2, 2012, the song topped the Canadian charts. For the following seven weeks, the song remained at the top, spending a total of eight weeks at the top.

In the United Kingdom, "Payphone" debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart. It remained at the top of the chart for two non-consecutive weeks and became both Maroon 5's and Wiz Khalifa's first chart-topping song in Britain. It sold over 141,000 copies, which marks the third week in a row that the number one single broke the 100,000 barrier after Gary Barlow and Cheryl Cole. According to the Official Charts Company, the song sold 725,000 copies in the United Kingdom in 2012, becoming Britain's ninth best-selling single of that year. "Payphone" had sold 68,000 digital copies in Italy.

 

The music video for the song directed by Samuel Bayer, was shot on April 17 and 18, 2012. Levine was spotted shooting the video, making a call from a Los Angeles phone booth, fleeing from the police with model Bregje Heinen and speeding away in a classic sports car. It is revealed in the video for Levine's role is a bank worker, he said: "I work at a bank; I have no self-confidence. It's gonna be a very difficult role for me to play because I'm a cocky motherf**ker." The video for "Payphone" premiered on May 9, 2012 on E! and was released on Vevo on May 10. It was reportedly similar to The Matrix, The Dark Knight and Die Hard, and the high-action FPS video game, Payday: The Heist. The car used in the video, a custom 1967 Shelby Cobra, was a kit-car hand built by car enthusiast Jim Fletcher from Fresno, CA.

The video begins with a flashforward that starts with a beleaguered Levine torching his ride and dialing a telephone number at a payphone. Another typical day at a Las Vegas (seen from the decals on the police cars) bank for Levine is shown next, which turns into chaos when some bandits enter and take charge (some of the bank robbers are played by the other members of the band: guitarist James Valentine, drummer Matt Flynn, bassist Mickey Madden and keyboardist, previously a touring Maroon 5 member, PJ Morton) – all of this happens while the song plays in the background. Levine grabs a gun from one of the robbers and threatens to get rid of them. He and his female co-worker named Sonya (played by Dutch model Bregje Heinen) escape, though Levine is shot in the arm, but when some cops mistake him for one of the robbers, Levine tells Sonya to hide in a car and steals an AC Cobra 427 that belongs to Wiz Khalifa to get away from them. A car chase follows and when Levine is almost caught by the police, he steers the stolen convertible onto the wrong side of the road and causes a huge explosion, which destroys one of the police cars. When he finally reaches his destination in Los Angeles, he passes by a place where Khalifa, the owner of the car, performed his rap earlier. After Levine gets out of the convertible, it also explodes and he enters a booth, injured, with the titular payphone, probably to call for help (it is also likely that he is calling Sonya) – this connects to the beginning of the video.

The video was nominated for an MTV VMA for Best Pop Video.

 

 A lyric video for "Payphone" premiered on April 16, 2012 on Maroon 5's Vevo channel. The clip is in an animated graphic novel style, drawn in panels. The clip shows the main character, presumably frontman Adam Levine, looking back on his relationship and heroically fighting monsters, rescuing old women from muggers, etc. Towards the end, Wiz Khalifa appears in a hoodie, acting as Levine's crime-fighting sidekick