Kara's Flowers grew up: how a school band became Maroon 5

Maroon 5 began as Kara's Flowers, formed in Los Angeles in 1994 by four students at Brentwood School: singer and guitarist Adam Levine, guitarist Jesse Carmichael, bassist Mickey Madden and drummer Ryan Dusick. The name came from a girl at school on whom the band had a “collective crush”. Levine was 15 and Dusick 16 when they were introduced through a mutual friend. They released an independent album, ...We Like Digging?, in late 1994, and played many shows in the years after.

A beach party in Malibu changed things. Producer Tommy Allen heard them there and offered to manage them, recording a full record with his partner, the songwriter John DeNicola. That led to a deal with Reprise Records and the debut The Fourth World in 1997, which drew a tepid response. The label dropped them, and the members went off to college. In 2001 the group re-emerged as Maroon 5, adding guitarist James Valentine and signing to Octone Records.

Their first album under the new name, Songs About Jane, came out in 2002. The singles “Harder to Breathe”, “This Love” and “She Will Be Loved” pushed it to number six on the Billboard 200, and it went quadruple platinum by 2005, the year the band won the Grammy for Best New Artist. “Sunday Morning” is one of the songs from that record. The second album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long, debuted at number one in 2007, led by the Hot 100 chart-topper “Makes Me Wonder”.

The hits kept coming: “Moves Like Jagger” reached number one in the US, and “One More Night” spent nine consecutive weeks at the top of the Hot 100. Later albums such as Red Pill Blues and Jordi brought further changes to the lineup, with Sam Farrar becoming the bassist. Maroon 5 has sold more than 135 million records and won three Grammy Awards, an unlikely outcome for a band that was once dropped by its first label.