"Daylight" Maroon 5

There's no worse sin in popular culture than being boring—except, perhaps, for trying to pass off mediocrity as a work of genius. Maroon 5 has done both with their latest single, "Daylight," releasing earlier today a nearly ten-minute "It Gets Better"-style video for the song featuring contributions from fans around the world. It is, at best, an act of ludicrous self-aggrandizement. "Daylight" offers the vague soft-rock musings of a lover who must leave in the morning—a far cry from the raw, often tragic, and rather moving confessions of the video. That's not to say the Daylight Project, as the band has dubbed it, is entirely without merit. But in this context, it mostly comes across as exploitative, attempting to elevate bland album filler into the status of an empowerment anthem. C+