Gym Class Heroes Ended Things on a High Note with "Stereo Hearts"

Gym Class Heroes blended hip-hop and alt-rock to great effect in the early 2000s, surging toward the top of the pop charts with "Cupid's Chokehold" in 2006. Five years later, with the help of another high-voiced lead singer of a band, the group reached the Top 10 with "Stereo Hearts," the first single off their last album, The Papercut Chronicles II.

The song began life as a demo by a pair of down-on-their-luck songwriters named Brandon Lowry and Dano Oriello, who'd written and produced under the name Robopop. "It was originally more of an emo-pop-punk thing," Lowry told the Songfacts podcast. "It turned into this entity of rapping and singing, but the original song was me and two other people that we wrote on a piano."

Eventually the demo found its way to Gym Class Heroes frontman Travie McCoy and producer Benny Blanco, who felt it had potential to be another hit for the group. But the icing on the cake was a killer chorus from Blanco's friend Adam Levine, well-known as the frontman for pop band Maroon 5. "He just destroyed it," McCoy told MTV about Levine's work ethic in the studio. "Watching that dude do [vocal] runs, and first he belts out the hook, and I'm like, 'OK!' then he does overdubs and he's like, 'Nah, I don't like that, I can do better.'"

The rest of the band found Levine's vocals to be a pleasant surprise. "We had never practiced the song all together before," guitarist Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo told Billboard. "Adam Levine just happened to be there with his people from The Voice and we were playing the song and all of a sudden, Adam just flies through the door and starts singing the chorus. It was pretty amazing."

Fans found the song just as amazing as the group did: "Stereo Hearts" exactly matched "Cupid's Chokehold" on the pop charts, reaching No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 3 in England. (The Papercut Chronicles II yielded another two Top 30 hits in the States, as well.) Gym Class Heroes went on a hiatus a year later - one that only ended briefly with some live shows in 2018 - but "Stereo Hearts" resonates more than a decade later.