Maroon 5's new album, JORDI, arrives today.  It's the band's first album since singer Adam Levine left The Voice, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the group wasn't even able to enjoy having him in the studio full-time.

"We were in Buenos Aires when everything went down," guitarist James Valentine tells ABC Audio.  "Then we got on a plane, we came back and then I didn't see any of the band members in person for almost a year. We were all pretty strict with our lockdown."

James notes, "It was a very different process. Adam was recording in his house, with his computer being controlled by an engineer who was in a different location. And somehow we got through all of it!"

But the fact that the album was, as James says, "made almost entirely in quarantine" is why it has so many guest performers. In addition to Megan Thee Stallion, who raps on "Beautiful Mistakes," JORDI also features Stevie Nicks, singer/songwriters H.E.R. and blackbear, and late rappers Nipsey Hussle and Juice WRLD.

"We were recording it in sort of an 'email files around' fashion," James explains. "And so as long as we were emailing the files around from person to person, we [figured we] might as well...expand that circle and email them to some other people!"

JORDI is also Maroon 5's first album since the sudden 2017 death of their manager Jordan Feldstein, and is named in his honor.

"Titling records is always a very difficult process, and there's usually a lot of back-and-forth, but...I think everyone was 100% on board right away," James says of the title, which was Adam's idea. "[Jordan] was such a huge part of what we built as a band...we miss him every day."

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