Raphael Dias/Getty ImagesMaroon 5 is enjoying their fourth straight week at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with their smash “Girls Like You.” Guitarist James Valentine says the band can hardly believe they’ve managed to rack up another number one hit at this late stage in their career.
As James tells ABC Radio, “We were just so blown away by the success, because being so ‘advanced’ into our career — that’s a nice way to say ‘we’re old!’ — I don’t think any of us expected to have a Hot 100 #1 again, just because it’s so competitive. So we’re just beyond stoked.”
Maroon 5 wrapped up its Red Pill Blues tour Monday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden, and James says it’s been a blast performing “Girls Like You” live.
“It’s been a great feeling,” he says. “Every time we’ve got a song like ‘Girls Like You’…that turned out to be a huge hit, you can just feel the air in the room change, once you go into those opening notes.”
Also making the tour fun, James says, was the set list.
“Just because now every song we play is a song that’s a single, it feels like it’s a different sort of show at this point,” he explains. “It’s a greatest hits sort of set, which we’ve never been able to do before. But if you stick around as long as we have, you can start to do that!”
During the tour, Verizon’s Up Rewards program customers enjoyed the show from a special pit right in front of the stage. The fans were so close to them, James jokes, that every night, they had the opportunity to “get some of Adam [Levine]’s sweat!”
Maroon 5 will end the year with two Las Vegas shows December 30 and 31.
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