Featured Image: Mike Posner by LunchBox LP on Flickr (CC By 2.0). No changes made and no rights reserved. Fair Use.

In honor of Mike Posner‘s catchy new release, “Stuck in the Middle“—as well as his upcoming album set to be released in January—it’s time to share an interesting story about Posner that many readers may not know.

Chances are that, whether or not you are a fan of the song, you have heard Maroon 5’s “Sugar” in the past few years, either on the radio or while you were out and about somewhere. The Grammy-nominated tune was nothing less than a mega-hit from the band’s fifth album, V. Like many listeners, you may assume this song was written by the band, or at least by Adam Levine. I found out otherwise about two and half years ago. While Levine did have some input—and the tune was written collaboratively before its final release—the majority of the lyrics came from none other than Michael Robert Henrion Posner.

Posner originally wrote “Sugar” with a producer/songwriter named Ammo, and planned to release it on his album, Pages. Somewhere between all of this, Adam Levine asked for the song—and Posner originally said no. While he was (presumably) writing for and working with other artists at this point, it looks like there was just something he really liked about “Sugar” and the personal details included within its lyrics at the time. But eventually, Pages was (unfortunately) shelved, and MP agreed to give Adam Levine and Maroon 5 the rights to the song, and happily so.

While I think that Maroon 5 took “Sugar” in a bigger direction than Posner could have on his own, at least in 2014, there is still something to be said for his original version and its clever Posneresque lyricism. There are several videos of his version available on YouTube, but here is his stripped-down Ninja Tour version:

What do you think of Mike’s version? What other thoughts would you like to share? Let us know on social media or in the comments!