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Maroon 5 showed Washington D.C. a good time at the Verizon Center on their Overexposed concert on April 3.

As I climbed to my seats in the Verizon Center with my friends for the concert, I had high expectations for the Maroon 5 Overexposed concert. I had already seen them live at Preakness in 2012, and expected a more intimate setting with newer songs. When the arena went dark and I heard the rattle of a coins and a dial tone, I knew I wouldn’t leave disappointed.

Maroon 5’s most recent album, Overexposed, has already proven popular among fans, with hits such as “Daylight” and “One More Night” being played on the radio often. However, Maroon 5 is more popular for their older albums, such as Songs About Jane and It Won’t Be Soon Before Long. The concert was a mix of their most popular songs from all of these albums, with a few lesser known songs from Overexposed such as “Love Somebody” and “Wipe Your Eyes.”

Owl City started the night by singing a few songs to a half-filled stadium that did not know most of the songs. Then, he sang “Fireflies” while the audience took out their cell phones to light up the arena. This sight was incredible to see and definitely saved him from a boring show. Owl City also sang his recent hit “Good Time” that got the crowd pumped, but the substitution of Carly Rae Jepsen’s part with a random keyboardist singing stopped the fun mentality of the song. About 30 minutes later, the band Neon Trees came on. They were surprisingly very good, with lead singer Tyler Glenn singing with a wider vocal range than seen in the band’s music. Glenn also showed off some cool dance moves that definitely resembled Michael Jackson’s iconic dance style and pleased the crowd. Everyone had fun singing “Everybody Talks” as Neon Trees ended the opening acts.

The Verizon Center both made and broke the concert. Throughout the concert, the light show was consistently fun and adrenaline-building, consistently playing in sync with the songs. However, the acoustics in the arena were just terrible. The bass was too loud not only for Maroon 5, but for their opening acts, Owl City and Neon Trees. The lead singers for all of these acts could barely be heard when they were speaking to the crowd.

Fortunately, the crowd was able to hear lead singer Adam Levine when he had moved to a smaller stage in the center of the crowd to sing slower songs. He dedicated their popular song “Daylight” to the fans that were drowning him out with their screams. Two songs later, he explained to the crowd that the majority of their fans were girls, so he always liked to dedicate the next song to all the ladies in the arena. Guitarist James Valentine crossed a bridge while strumming an acoustic guitar as Levine began singing “She Will Be Loved.” In the last chorus of the song, Levine stopped singing and asked different sections of the crowd to sing different parts of the chorus. As the audience began singing“she will be loved” and “I don’t mind spending everyday, out on your corner in the pouring rain,” Levine sang the last lines of the song and the rest of the band finished the song with drums and the electric guitar. This part of the concert was absolutely beautiful and was definitely the best part of the night. Although this is something Maroon 5 often does with this song, it never fails to awe the crowd.

Besides this, Maroon 5 did not interact much with the crowd like other artists do such as Bruce Springsteen and The Fray. They almost seemed like they only took the stage to perform their songs and not get comfortable with the audience. Still, they had fun performing and interacting with the crowd. From Valentine’s hair flipping to drummer Matt Flynn’s long solos to Levine sliding across the stage on his back, the concert was a fun experience and went by very fast. Pushing out of The Verizon Center with the crowd, I only wished that Maroon 5 could have played more songs.