"This Love" is a song by the American pop rock band Maroon 5. The song was released on January 12, 2004, as the second single from their debut album Songs About Jane (2002).
The track is built around a distinctive piano line and repeating guitar riff. The lyrics are based on the band's lead vocalist Adam Levine's break-up with an ex-girlfriend. He revealed that the song was written in the "most emotionally trying time" in his life. He has also described the lyrics of this song as being extremely erotic. "This Love" was critically acclaimed by music critics, who noted the track's musical scope.
The song entered the top ten on most charts, topping several of Billboard magazine's component charts, including reaching the number one spot on the Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks chart. The music video met with controversy, regarding extended intimate scenes between Levine and his girlfriend. "This Love" helped Maroon 5 win the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist and was the third-most-played song of 2004. The live version of the song won Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 2006 Grammy Awards. "This Love" is one of Maroon 5's most successful singles.
Background
"This Love" was the second single from Maroon 5's 2002 debut album, Songs About Jane. In an interview with MTV News in August 2002, Levine revealed that he wrote the song the day his girlfriend moved away after they broke up. In another interview, Levine revealed that the song was written in the "most emotionally trying time" in his life. He also added, "I was in a relationship that was ending, but I was really excited on the other end because the band was about to go make the record and I was ecstatic to go in the studio. She was literally leaving town within days of me writing the lyrics to 'This Love', so I was in prime emotional condition to write a song with that kind of conflict."
Music and lyrics
During development of "This Love", the band stated that the song was influenced by musician Stevie Wonder. The piece was written in the key of C minor, the metre is set in common time, and the piece's tempo is a moderate 95 beats per minute. The introduction of "This Love" features a piano-led strut. Maroon 5 has called "This Love" a prime pop-rock song. The music featured in the song has a lot more rock-guitar crunch, and is considered a soulful, pop rock and alternative rock song. According to Johnny Loftus of Allmusic, the music featured in the song has "a slick channeling of vintage R&B rhythms into punchy pop dynamics". Loftus felt that the song features "Levine's wry falsetto around strutting, bottom-heavy piano and percussion both programmed and live; chirping backup vocals and washes of sunny synth and flute acted as counterweights". Loftus also noted that the band has a "sexual charge" with the lyrics, "I tried my best to feed her appetite / To keep her coming every night / So hard to keep her satisfied". The Boston Globe's Steve Morse described the single's sounds as "a rocking yet soulful tale about the breakup of a relationship". Meghan Bard of The Daily Campus adds that the song has "Stevie Wonder-esque vocals and a funky R&B beat". In the extended version of the song, which is 4 minutes and 26 seconds long, the chorus of the band's next single, "She Will Be Loved", can be heard from 3:21 to 3:42, during the outro. The demo of the song features a guitar solo.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, when asked about the lyrics "Keep her coming every night" and "Sinking my fingertips into every inch of you", Levine said: "Yep, that's sexual, all right. I was so sick of typical lyrics like 'Ooh, baby' and 'I love you' and all this vague shit. I thought the more explicit I got without being totally explicit was a nice approach. The little girls would enjoy them, and it would go right over my grandparents' heads. But it would hit my ex-girlfriend like a ton of bricks. It was perfect." He also comments on how MTV played an edited version of the song for the music video, with the word "coming" edited out of the line "keep her coming every night". Levine noted, "MTV has now edited the language. They won't let me say, 'Keep her coming every night', and they took the sinking out of 'sinking my fingertips'. It's like communist China. It's totally bizarre."