It reached its million sales mark in August 2014 and had sold 1.6 million copies by the year's end.
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The song also logged close to 1,800 first-day spins on radio which, according to the Nielsen BDS, would amount to a one-day audience impression of seventeen million. It has since peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100. Shortly after its release, "Maps" quickly reached number one on the Billboard Twitter Real Time Trending 140 chart, eventually staying within the upper ranks for several hours. Though Levine's vocals remain constant, the song soon crescendos into a fuller sound, with a chorus that isn't so much explosive as it is, well, danceable," and compared the track to "Payphone", the lead single from the band's fourth studio album Overexposed (2012): "The more you think about the two lead singles versus each other, the more they feel exactly the opposite. Music Times commented, "With his singsong melody over the relaxed, plucked guitars and subtle drums, Maroon 5 create a chill vibe before building the song into something a bit more powerful. Idolator's Robbie Daw wrote that "similar to Bruno Mars' 'Locked Out of Heaven', 'Maps' has a Sting/The Police vibe, particularly with the guitar licks and Levine's multi-tracked vocal harmonies on the chorus." He also added that the influence of Ryan Tedder (and OneRepublic's pop-rock anthems, such as "Counting Stars" and "Love Runs Out") is evident. Jeff Benjamin of Fuse compared the opening guitar licks to the "California-cool sound" of Red Hot Chili Peppers. In the chorus, Adam Levine sings "All the roads you took came back to me / So I'm following the map that leads to you." Lyrically, the song is about "the search for love, particularly a love that has been lost and needs to be found". It marks Maroon 5's further departure from the funkier sound for which the band was originally known. "Maps" is an up-tempo pop rock track, composed in the key of C# minor (with the main chord progression of A–B–C#m - both in the verses and the chorus - and F#m–G#m-G#7 in the pre-chorus), that contains a "breezy guitar lick".
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The song was written by Adam Levine, Ammar Malik, Ryan Tedder, Benny Blanco and Noel Zancanella, and produced by the latter three. Blanco and Malik have previously teamed with Maroon 5 on the songs " Moves Like Jagger" and " Payphone", while Tedder and Zancanella have worked with the group on the songs " Love Somebody" and " Lucky Strike".