It's pretty safe to say there are very few people on Earth who really knew who John Mayer was. No one could have predicted that the guy who wrote a song about Jennifer Love Hewitt's bubblegum lips"" and ""candy tongue"" would not only end up becoming good friends with Eric Clapton but would put out two blues-influenced albums in the span of a year and half and gain respect from Buddy Guy, Herbie Hancock and B.B. King. But this is the direction Mayer has traveled over the past six years""and he's not looking back.
""I want to do another trio record,"" Mayer recently told The Daily Cardinal. ""I think the trio deserves to do a studio album just to see the design of the trio through. I think what I'm most inspired to do is find that perfect balance between blues and pop, or blues and blank.""
This mentality has proven to be successful. Just this past Sunday, Mayer took home two Grammy awards for Pop Vocal Album for Continuum and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for ""Waiting on the World to Change."" Mayer was also a performer this year, selecting to perform ""Gravity""""a song that has grown to become one of his favorites.
""There's a real lesson that sprung out of [""Gravity""] in terms of songwriting that I'm going to really engineer more songs out of. It's very simple but probably one of the best songs I've got in my repertoire because of the simplicity,"" Mayer said. ""The first instinct is to always go to more words, and ""Gravity"" is my first real success with the ‘less-is-more' approach, and no matter where I am in the world""no matter what kind of day I'm having""once I step up to the mic to sing the first word of ""Gravity,"" I can't help but to mean it.""
While on stage at the Grammy Awards, Mayer was accompanied by both Corinne Bailey Rae and John Legend on vocals. This wasn't the first time Mayer has collaborated with artists of other genres. Mayer recently lent his guitar abilities on the Dixie Chicks' Take The Long Way Home, which won the coveted Album of the Year Grammy award this year. Also, in 2005, Mayer collaborated with Kanye West by contributing both guitar and vocals on Common's hit single ""Go.""
""Just being in the studio with Kanye""and even Common as well""is great in and of itself, but it's also something you can call up on when you work with really great people. This goes for anything in or out of music,"" he said. ""When you work with really great people, and you can see how they work""everybody has a pattern and a rhythm and a cadence, and it's interesting to borrow from it down the line without being there.""
While Mayer tends to spend a lot of time on the road, his love for the studio was displayed in the liner notes of Continuum, where he wrote, ""This is What My Heart Looks Like"" on top of a picture of a recording studio.
""There's no show I've ever played that could even come close to my best nights in the studio,"" he shared. ""The creation of something is, for me, far greater than the perfection of something on stage. You know, I really do feel that in some ways I'm tracing the record""trying not to trace too far off the lines when I'm performing. But that moment when you are in the studio, and you created something you didn't have in the morning""that's just unbelievable.""
Other than exploring new ground musically on Continuum, Mayer explored more political themes in his songwriting that were outside the tongue-in-cheek lyrics that made him famous. When asked if he felt that musicians had an obligation to be political because of the spotlight in which they are thrusted, Mayer was quick to minimize the connections between musicians and politics.
""I think there are as many political musicians as there are political carpenters or political bakers. I think the statistics are the same but when someone happens to be political and happens to be a musician, I don't see how anyone could deny that mouthpiece,"" he said. ""I don't see someone going ‘Well I'm a musician, so I better take advantage of this spotlight I have.' I think it's all very organic.""
Despite this, songs like ""Waiting On The World To Change"" and ""Vultures"" display very political themes. Mayer was asked if he felt political songs, like these, had an influence on the political opinions of those who listen to them.
""If they're good songs, I think""to be honest""I think most political songs are not very good songs. I think the ""political song"" hasn't been given the chance to be a really good song in a long time,"" he said. ""[If] you're an artist and you are writing a tune and you have a really good track and you go ‘Oh my God. This is the most catchy song of all time.' I don't think even the most political artist is going to put a political lyric on it.""
""When it comes down to a song that has a little folky element or something a little dower-sounding""I mean that's when people like to put political things on top of it, but that really doesn't behoove anybody because those songs kind of stink. Like [if] ""My Love"" by Justin Timberlake was called ""My Senators,"" would people be singing about their senators while they were getting their car key out?""
While Mayer's songs may or may not influence the ideologies of his listeners, they are still incredibly well crafted songs, and their magnitude will only be amplified when he plays at the Alliant Energy Center tonight.
With Continuum, it is safe to say that Mayer has cemented himself a place in history as one of the greatest musicians of this generation. Mayer was asked whether he would like to be remembered as a singer or a guitar player.
""I don't have any illusions that I'll be remembered as a singer,"" he said. ""But it would be nice if every year on the day I was born for the rest of time in popular culture someone raised a glass and said ‘What a damn good singer,' but then maybe a shorter guy with less hair at the end of the table said ‘Don't forget about the guitar playing,"" and then another round of cheers. That would be nice.
