Maxim Model Girls, Miami, Florida, United States

In February 2008, Maxim was criticized by the rock band The Black Crowes for a review of their upcoming CD, Warpaint, with the band claiming that the magazine reviewed the album without hearing it. According to Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus, the magazine stated in an email that "Of course, we always prefer to hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former." The magazine's editorial director James Kaminsky later apologized, stating "It is Maxim's editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers." Facing more criticism over rating albums without listening to them, Maxim magazine maintains it was previewing CDs in its March 2008 issue, not reviewing them, and the mistake was to include star ratings.
Celebrity profiles
Many celebrities (singers, actresses, models, etc.) have posed for Maxim over the years. Examples include: