Maroon 5 Concerned Fans Wouldn’t Know What a Payphone Is.[VIDEO]

Maroon 5's new single "Payphone" has become one of their biggest-selling hits to date, but initially, the band was concerned about the track,  not because of its sound, but because they were worried people wouldn't actually know what a payphone is.

Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine tells ABC News Radio that naming a song after a piece of outdated technology that hardly anyone uses was "absolutely" a concern.  "It was like, 'Will kids know what a payphone is?'" he says.  And it turns out that the band had good reason to be worried that their fans wouldn't get it, because of their experience with their last big hit, "Moves Like Jagger."

"I actually have way less faith in the public's knowledge after 'Jagger,'" explains James, "Because kids all over the place, and adults, were asking, 'What's a Jagger?'" Yes, as incredible as it may seem, James says there are people who had no clue that Maroon 5 was singing about Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.

He adds, "I didn't even believe it until, I mean, look on the Internet. There's a lot of people who did not know what a Jagger was.  So yeah, the 'Payphone' thing, we definitely thought about that."

Ultimately, says James, Maroon 5 decided that the fact that hardly anyone uses a payphone these days worked in their favor when it came to reflecting the feelings of the song's narrator, who's upset because his girlfriend has left him and he can't get her back. "We thought about the fact that if you end up at a payphone today, in 2012, then you're clearly in a very desperate place," he explains.  "So, in that way it kind of works."