Maroon 5 calls up 1 billion views on YouTube with “Payphone,” the pop-rock band’s collaboration with rapper Wiz Khalifa.
Released back in April 2012 with an official music video directed by Samuel Bayer, “Payphone” (via A&M/Octone Records) becomes Maroon 5’s sixth entry into the streaming giant’s Billion Views Club.
A payphone was already a thing of the past when Maroon 5 dropped the single, but that didn’t stop it from ringing up new sales records.
The cinematic video finds Levine in a miserable mood. At the top, he sings: “I’m at a payphone trying to call home, all of my change I spent on you.”
Misery loves company, as we know. In its opening week, “Payphone” shifted some 493,000 digital downloads — remember them? — for a No. 3 entry on the Billboard Hot 100, and a No. 1 start on the Digital Songs chart. That hot opening was, for its time, the best digital sales frame by a group, bettering the 465,000 sold by the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow” from three years earlier.
“Payphone” got its premiere on that year on NBC’s The Voice, where Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine had a second gig as a coach. The song was housed on the band’s fourth studio album, Overexposed, which was executive produced by Max Martin, with additional cuts produced by OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder. Overexposed peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Shellback and Benny Blanco produced “Payphone,” which also reached No. 2 on the national singles chart, one of the band’s 15 top 10 hits.
Maroon 5 has also enjoyed entry into YouTube’s Billion Views Club with “Sugar,” “Memories,” “One More Night,” “Girls Like You (Volume 2),” and “Girls Like You.” The band’s eighth and most recent album, Love Is Like, dropped in 2025.
Watch the music video for “Payphone” below.