March 18: Adam Levine and Maroon 5

Musician, actor, and sex symbol Adam Noah Levine, lead singer for Maroon 5, was born in Los Angeles on this date in 1979. The band’s first album, Songs about Jane, went platinum in 2002, and four more albums have been released since. In 2010, the band’s digital single, “Moves Like Jagger,” became the eighth best-selling digital hit of all time. Levine has a tenor voice and a good falsetto, and he “makes the kind of music, catchy but deeply uncool, that people hate themselves for singing along to,” writes Jessica Pressler at GQ. Levine has parleyed his success and good looks into a one-man Show Biz industry: an acting career in film and television, a men’s fragrance, a fashion line, the First Act 222 Guitar, which he helped design, and his own 222 record label. Apart from supplying grist for the gossip column mills, he has given support to ADHD research and consciousness-raising (he was diagnosed as ADHD as a kid) and is vociferous in support of marriage equality and gay rights (he has a gay brother). To see the band playing on David Letterman’s show, look below.

“Before I go on stage I pretend that everyone loves me.” —Adam Levine