Maroon 5 and mainstream success

After the break up of Kara's Flowers, Levine, along with Carmichael, left Los Angeles to pursue further studies in New York.On MTV News, in 2002, he said: "That's when I started waking up to the whole hip-hop, R&B thing. We had friends named Chaos and Shit. It was not Brentwood High". After dropping out of Five Towns College, where he and Carmichael had enrolled to study music, they reunited with Valentine and Dusick to form a band once more. They experimented with several styles, including country and folk, before deciding groove-based music would become their genre. Levine explained the need for a makeover for the band: "We were just so sick of being a typical rock 'n'roll band ... I felt like I needed to look elsewhere for vocal inspiration." The band put together a demo that was rejected by several labels, before falling into the hands of Octone Records executives James Diener, Ben Berkman, and David Boxenbaum. Following Berkman's advice, the band added a sixth member, Mickey Madden and Sam Farrar, and was renamed Maroon 5. In an interview with HitQuarters, Berkman explained that Levine "seemed to be a very shy, shoe-gazing type ... a fifth member could play the guitar to free up the singer [Levine], so he could be the star I perceived him to be".

Levine performing with Maroon 5 in 2007

Around this time, Levine had been working as a writer's assistant on the CBS television show Judging Amy, whose producer Barbara Hall was his family friend. While on the show, he would spend time writing songs about his ex-girlfriend Jane. These songs were put into Maroon 5's debut album Songs About Jane, which was released in June 2002. The album slowly gained airplay, and eventually became a sleeper hit, selling an estimated 10 million copies and becoming the tenth best-selling album of 2004, two years after its release. In 2005, Maroon 5 won their first Grammy Award, for Best New Artist. The next year, they won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for the second Songs About Jane single "This Love".