If you were trying to dispel the notion that you were Hollywood royalty — to the velvet-roped manor born — you might select a different venue in which to hold court from the one Maroon 5 have opted for.

Poolside at one of Tinseltown’s most exclusive hotels, the American band, who sold more than 10m copies of their debut album, settle on loungers in the fierce sunshine. What seems like the city’s entire contingent of wannabe starlets parades pointedly or sunbathes languorously in bikinis no more substantial than Alice bands. It’s a wonder anyone gets any work done. Yet they do. The city may contrive to hide the hustle behind a designer-label disguise of listless-ness, but the deals get done. “So, what do you know about our group?” asks the keyboardist, Jesse Carmichael, in a clear inversion of established interview etiquette. The temptation, of course, is to indicate, with a sweep of the arm, the beautiful-people surroundings, the palm trees, the smell of serious money. Yet it is an interesting question. A lot of people perceive Maroon 5 chiefly as being rich, clean-cut, celeb-dating college boys who can carry a tune. Another perception is that, crease-free-film-script-style, they glided to success with their first album, Songs About Jane. In fact, that record was released as far back as 2002, and it wasn’t until 12 months later that the band began to pick up radio support. It is worth remembering, too, that three of them had been slogging away at it since they were 14, and had been signed, as Kara’s Flowers, to a major label in the late 1990s, only to be axed when their album bombed.

So, that scarcely makes where Maroon 5 are now — on the brink of releasing their second album, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long — part of a master plan. “We were so green and young when we made Songs About Jane,” says the guitarist, James Valentine, the only out-of-towner (he’s from Nebraska). “We were in total isolation, with literally no idea if anyone would ever hear it.”

“And it took us a long time to get signed,” adds the bassist, Mickey Madden. “I remember a meeting at one label where there was a big, round-the-boardroom-table thing — half of the people wanted us to be more R&B, and the other half felt we should be more modern rock.”

“And they wanted us to decide which,” Carmichael interrupts. “Nobody wanted both — which is what we actually were.” The marriage of sounds came about after Carmichael and the singer, Adam Levine, headed east to study in New York after the collapse of Kara’s Flowers, and found themselves exposed to hip-hop, R&B, gospel and classic soul in the dorms and corridors of their university. Returning to LA, they sought to parlay these influences into a new band.

Refreshingly, they all admit that, for the most part, they failed to do that with Songs About Jane, an album whose two biggest hits — This Love and She Will Be Loved — were prime pop-rock. And into that pigeonhole the band were duly slotted. They see the new album as their chance to set this right, and they have certainly achieved that: the first four songs (including their new single, Makes Me Wonder) are dancefloor-friendly monsters driven by the new drummer, Matt Flynn, with nods to the Doobie Brothers, Michael Jackson and Prince. The keening balladry of old doesn’t get a look-in until the lighters-aloft weepie Won’t Go Home Without You, a modern-day Every Breath You Take, which, along with Better That We Break, will reconnect the band with the millions who bought She Will Be Loved. The blurb accompanying their new record has Levine crediting the record label “for welcoming new sounds and textures”. Is a band that has sold 10m albums really dependent on such a yea or nay? “That was a clever, ego-stroking paraphrase of what I said,” the singer laughs.

“To their credit, they were very hands-off,” Madden adds, before Levine continues: “They were hands-off because they had to be. We shut everybody out for a year. I don’t think anything was contingent on them saying yes or no. It was, ‘This is what we’ve got.’”

As well as being the band’s main writer/breadwinner, Levine is also Maroon 5’s most obviously driven member. It is always assumed that huge stars are slightly set apart and lizard-like (as Levine can seem) to begin with — that, prefame, you would already have been able to note in them a gimlet-eyed hardness, an air of man-on-a-mission calm. (But if that is so, where does the failure of Kara’s Flowers fit in?) If Levine has a touch of the gimlet eyes and man-on-a-mission about him now, though, perhaps that’s simply what happens when you sell 10m albums and are still trying to make sense of it all.

“We’ve never made music to please anybody but ourselves,” he says. “As long as we continue to do that, it will be successful.” He says that, rather than feeling pressured, the band were gagging to get into the studio to make some music. Yes, if the album spawns multiple hits, he will be euphoric. “We write pop songs,” he says. “It’s not outlandish that some of them could end up being singles.”

Do the pigeonholes bother him? “People have this idea that rock music is loud, distorted guitars, crashing cymbals and somebody screaming, but that has never been what it’s all about. You can dance to rock. And a pop song is a pop song. It doesn’t matter how you’re presenting it. A great Foo Fighters track is a pop song.”

The band start discussing whether people will dance to the more beat-driven material on the new album. “Are you supposed,” muses Carmichael, “to even acknowledge it if one of your records comes on in a club? Are you allowed to dance, or only move slightly?”

The rest of the band turn on him with raucous glee. Their explosion of laughter briefly disturbs the unnatural quiet beside the limpid, flickering water; yet none of the perfect people stirs. That Maroon 5 ever managed to haul their butts off the loungers is an achievement in itself. That they’ve also made a scarily commercial new album is verging on the miraculous.

Makes Me Wonder is released on Octone/A&M on May 14; It Won’t Be Soon Before Long follows on May 21

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