You can listen to “Wait (Chromeo Remix)” by Maroon 5 here.

Maroon 5 are a real weird band. Their music is so varied across that pop band space that they end up not really having any kind of identity. The truth is they have some good songs- they had a very good first album, but the good songs punctuate a lot of very lame, very clinical, very grating mega hits. The only two consistent things about them are the volume of music they produce and Adam Levine being intense.

However, if you pull the data from my Spotify, you might think I love Maroon 5. What I actually love is Chromeo’s remix of the Maroon 5 song “Wait”. The Chromeo remix has a totally different feel. It’s got disco guitars and bass. It’s got French house kinda production. It’s a song you can dance to. They seem to keep the main vocals very similar to the original which is bizarre to think about because it’s otherwise completely changed. The last minute or so are probably the highlight. The outro starts with a spacey kind of dripping keyboard added to the main riff. Then they add a classic Chromeo funk keyboard riff with a little more of an echo than they usually use in their own songs. It feels like a cover that really makes the song their own.

From a music industry angle, it’s interesting because this is the official remix. So somebody involved in the Maroon 5 universe pitched it to Chromeo. I think a Chromeo remix of “Wait” would always have gone in this direction so presumably they knew that the original song had the potential to be this good. And they stuck with it anyway…