Minutes into Monday’s Maroon 5 concert in Tel Aviv Monday night, tens of thousands of people could be heard singing in unison: “This love has taken its toll...”
It was one of those concerts where the performer almost didn’t need to sing, because the 60,000 people in the crowd knew every word.
Of course, frontman Adam Levine did actually sing, but he said several times during the nearly two-hour show that he loved hearing the crowd accompany him.
Levine gave a very energetic performance for the sold-out audience, constantly dancing up and down a catwalk that extended into the audience. In fitting with his reputation as someone who seems allergic to wearing a shirt, he seemed to unbutton a button every song, until he was jumping around shirtless.
The songs spanned Maroon 5’s 20 years of hits, like opening song “Moves Like Jagger,” and acoustic versions of “Payphone” and “Won’t Go Home Without You.”
Though Maroon 5 is a LA-based band with its own brand of California cool, there was Israeli energy peppered throughout the show.
When they played “Girls Like You,” the music video played in the background and the crowd roared whenever Gal Gadot appeared. (One wonders if they would have booed anti-Israel Rep. Ilhan Omar if they had recognized her in the video.)
“I’ve never been to Israel before and I have to tell you, this place is incredible,” Levine told the massive crowd, which, as always, went wild for the Israel talk. Maroon 5 resisted calls from the BDS movement to boycott Israel and cancel the show, and even added a second concert after Monday night’s sold out.
Levine called up a special guest for the song “Sunday Morning,” Tel Aviv street performer Coral Bismuth.
As the singer told it, he could hear her playing on the boardwalk from his hotel window and was very impressed. He even posted videos from the hotel to his Instagram account earlier this week. But what his Instagram followers didn’t know is that when she started playing Maroon 5’s “Sunday Morning,” he decided to invite her to perform with the band.
Levine and Bismuth sang a beautiful duet, bringing some Tel Aviv flavor to the LA rock group.