Grammys Flashback '05: Maroon 5 Beats Kanye

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Maroon 5 dropped into the music industry with a splash. The band's debut album, Songs About Jane, peaked in the Top 10 on the charts and earned multiplatinum certifications around the world. It became so popular that it won an award over Grammy powerhouse Kanye West.

In the span of eight years, Kanye West has become one of the most nominated artists in Grammys history, which began at his very first Grammys. At the 2005 ceremony, West was nominated for a year-high ten Grammys for his debut album, The College Dropout.


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The rapper would go on to win three of his eighteen total Grammys, but Best New Artist wouldn't be one of them. That one went to Maroon 5.

"Kanye did win this. ... I feel like he had something to do with this," front man Adam Levine says of winning the award, tongue-in-cheek suggesting a conspiracy by West. "...I told him the other day...'Listen man, you're going to win like seven or eight [Grammys]; we could just take one."


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The band didn't just receive an award at its first Grammys but was also part of an impressive opening number that included The Black Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani, Los Lonely Boys, and Franz Ferdinand that spanned twelve minutes.

"We weren't sure how the hell we were going to do it or how we were going to pull it off at all," Levine says. "We were all kind of nervous...but eventually we loosened and started to put it together organically. I wound up getting really excited about. It was finely tuned and we pulled it off."


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Eight years later, Maroon 5 is set to perform once again at the Grammys with potential awards on the horizon to add to their three Grammys, this time for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance ("Payphone") and for Best Pop Vocal Album (Overexposed).