Review #486: Continuum, John Mayer
#486: Continuum, John Mayer
Growing up, we had John Mayer’s debut Room for Squares on CD. I remember really liking it, and also thinking he was a cutie. As time went on, and I got punker, I sort of left him behind. Especially after “Daughters,” because, ew.
And then in 2010, he went ahead and nuked his own career. He was interviewed by Playboy and said some just, whew, stupid, stupid things. He said some degrading things about former Jessica Simpson, and then for some bonkers reason said that his “dick is sort of like a white supremacist,” before comparing it to David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK. To top it off, he used the n-word. Like, what?! John Mayer’s music was some of the most pleasant, inoffensive, adult contemporary stuff out there, so I think that made it all extra shocking. I also remember reading one of his interviews in Rolling Stone around this time, and thinking he was kind of an idiot. He basically disappeared for two years and then reappeared to apologize on The Ellen Degeneres Show, as one does.
It’s interesting that John Mayer was maybe the least self-reflective person on the planet for a little while, because all of my favorite songs off this album, released four years before the controversy, were introspective, How-Can-I-Live-My-Life-Better type songs. Mayer has called “Gravity” the “most important song [he’s] ever written.” It’s a song about fighting against his own penchant for self-destruction: Keep me where the light is. (Fun fact, Alicia Keys sings backup at the end.) See also the falsetto-fueled “Vultures” and the self-acceptance ballad “In Repair.”
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Mr. “Your Body Is A Wonderland” includes some gorgeous love songs, though they’re all breakup songs this time around. “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” mixes classic guitar licks with an angry, self-loathing goodbye, and “Dreaming with a Broken Heart” is a straight up delicate piano ballad. But he’s much more forward thinking on Continuum than he was on Room for Squares: see the moody “Belief” and the almost annoyingly optimistic “The Heart of Life.” Songs are loosely themed around Mayer’s preoccupation with the passage of time, too. “Waiting on the World to Change” successfully paints Gen Y’s apathy as powerlessness, and time as the cruelest politician; “Stop This Train” is a pretty acoustic ballad about time taking everything away from us, except for the moments where we manage to stop it.
Something that has become a lot clearer in recent years, but wasn’t widely known back in 2006, is the fact that John Mayer is one of the most talented working guitarists out there. I love this review that accuses him of having an identity crisis, asking if he’s “the consummate guitar hero exemplified when he plays a cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s ‘Lenny’, or is he the teen idol that the pubescent girls shriek for after he plays ‘Your Body Is a Wonderland’?” I distinctly remember one of my mom’s friends complaining about seeing John Mayer live, because she wasn’t expecting “all the guitar stuff.” But this album has him showing off a little, showing technical restraint on songs like “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” and some serious blues chops on “I’m Gonna Find Another You.” Standout was obviously his Jimi Hendrix cover, “Bold As Love.” It’s a little jarring on an otherwise melancholy album, to be honest! But it takes some serious balls for the Patron Saint of Adult Contemporary to take on the flashiest guitarist of all time.
Mayer seems to have figured his shit out since 2010, or at least learned when to keep his stupid mouth shut. He was the driving force behind Dead & Company, which has taken on such a life of his own, I didn’t even realize he was in the band for a long time. In any case, it’s always a pleasure to discover an artist my parents loved when I was a kid on RS’s list. It makes me realize how definitional music has been in my life — and reminds me to judge my parents’ music taste less.
Least Favorite Song: It wasn’t technically on the original album, but it was added on the 2008 re-release after he wrote it for the movie The Bucket List: “Say.” GOD I hate that song. Say what you need to say, ten thousand times.
Review #485: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Richard and Linda Thompson
