Your phone buzzes and wakes you up. After your eyes adjust to the painfully bright screen in the dark room, a reminder appears on the calendar of your phone.

“July 29: pre-order the new Maroon 5 album!”

Already having collected all the previous Maroon 5 albums: Songs About Jane, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, Hands All Over, and Overexposed, you have been waiting for the moment to officially order their next collection. You’re sure you will gain a few songs from this album to add to your running list of favorites.

A month later Aug. 29 you impatiently wait for the album, “V”, to automatically download onto your phone. Listening to the whole playlist while completing your homework, none of the songs seem to catch your attention. Unimpressed, you pause the music and push your phone to the side.

Two months after the official release, Oct. 29, you have not even bothered to listen to more than a few songs at a time. Still unimpressed, it is no surprise you haven’t discovered any hidden treasures in the new release. The album, “V,” by Maroon 5, has emerged as anything but notable and is a sad representation of what the band used to be.

From the release of the singles, “Maps” and “Animals,” before the album came out, expectations have remained low for the band’s fifth album. The singles have quickly grown to be overplayed pop songs whose listeners are quick to tune into a different radio station.

Not only did the two singles bring disappointment, but the rest of the album as well. There were no ear-perking songs, and all of them seemed to have a fast vibe. Even songs meant to be slower like “Unkiss Me” sounded rushed. This song oddly gave the sense that it would end any minute or as if your finger is meant to be hovering over the skip button.

This fast pop vibe also accompanied high-pitched singing found in most of the songs. Abandoning the raw band sound found in treasured, older albums, all the singing and fast tempo accomplished was the creation of an auto-tune junkyard.

Even if any of the songs were remotely enjoyable, the listener would have quite a hard time singing along. The high pitches reached by main singer Adam Levine in “Sugar” and “Feelings” are unnatural, and the listener would be better off jamming to an album that contains songs with reachable notes instead of ear-piercing ones.

What else is ear-piercing is the content of the album. The “seductive lyric scenarios” that iTunes’ Editors dote on are nothing but another example of how the album fits even more perfectly into the category of the cliché modern pop album. Where did the romantic “And She Will Be Loved” type songs disappear to? Does Maroon 5 believe the only way to hold on to listeners is to fall into the hands of society and sexualize their music? Not only is this “technique” overused, but also shallow. Emotional lyrics found in “Just A Feeling” from the album “Hands All Over” are much more alluring compared to the barbarous, provocative lyrics found in the song “Animals” in “V.”

The album fails to provoke feelings and instead focuses on shallow perceptions of the world. From a song about a girlfriend possibly cheating by means of her cell phone in “In Your Pocket” to a song that is so high-pitched you can barely make out the lyrics, “V” is better left unbought. Maroon 5, it’s time for a “Wake Up Call.”