Feeling the Blues with John Mayer

My 'Sob Rock' tendencies with the complicated king of breakups

I would burn up in John Mayer’s atmosphere

When I was 17, I dated a man. In my eyes, he was a real man at his ripe age of 21: we met in a nightclub, he owned a car, he had a job, he had days off. He even played golf. I still had braces. I’d over-plucked my eyebrows. I wore ill-fitting H&M pencil skirts to the sixth form centre thinking I looked like the next winner of The Apprentice. I didn’t. I was the antithesis of cool. So naturally, when this grown-up-boy asked me if I liked John Mayer on our second date, I panicked, blindly nodded and smiled as he turned up the dial on the dashboard of his red Honda Civic and we sped through the high streets of Warwickshire, Vultures blaring out the sun-roof. Within minutes of returning home, I went straight to the family computer and YouTube searched John Mayer. I recognised Your Body is a Wonderland and nothing more. Attentively, openly, curiously, I listened to everything and I was immediately hooked. 

It’s not clear if I did truly like this music at the time or if I taught myself to appreciate it in a bid to evolve from teen to fully-fledged adult (much like we coerce ourselves to love mushrooms, tolerate lager and become satisfied by deep cleaning a bathroom). At 17, I didn’t have Instagram memes to bat back and forth as passive flirtation volleyball. It was all lyrics in an MSN screenname and stalking someone’s tagged pictures until you could decipher every ornate detail about their personality. I’m unsure if my immediate reciprocation of this man’s cultural peacocking was to validate his declared passion, gratitude for removing the need to go full social-media-Sherlock to understand him or just sheer desperation to find a common connection. I think the answer, was a smorgasbord of all three. (Though in my case, definitely more of the latter.)

The man was a Mayer fanatic. My paramour’s obsession was infectious. I was attracted to his depth of interest and the level of intel he had on Mayer’s musical backstory. Of course, this man also played the guitar which I found jaw droppingly hot (how cliché). And when the alternative hobby was golf, need I say more? 

Before our third date, I went into Fopp! and bought three John Mayer albums (Heavier Things, Continuum, Battle Studies). I took to revising the collection like the good student, I had so far been. Alas, euphonious appreciation alone does pop-star-crossed lovers make. My relationship with that lovely young man died six months later. However, my CD collection remains and my love for John Mayer has stood the test of time. 

During and after we dated, I absorbed Mayer by osmosis. Every morning I would listen to the Heavier Things album start to finish as I got dressed. In the common room, Continuum would pound through my iPod Nano as I pretended to get ahead on homework and completed The Times Crossword instead. At 18, I got my own car. Battle Studies was jammed permanently into the CD drive of my 1998 edition Ford Fiesta, playing on a non-stop loop (apart from on longer journeys where the player would overheat and stop working). If I ever hear Heartbreak Warfare now, it issues a Pavlovian start of day tiredness; I can smell the old car exhaust by connotation as Mayer breathes the words ‘lightning strikes’. If I’d put as much revision into my A level chemistry studies as I did Battle Studies, I might have scored something higher than an E in my first module on organic mechanisms. Thank god for retakes. 

Now, I return to John Mayer sporadically but never anything less than obsessively. In periods of sadness, Mr Mayer soothes my soul; in heartache, dear John is re-coronated my king. 

Just this week, I read this sentence in Green Dot, a coming-of-age story about a twenty-something, chasing unattainable romance on her torturous quest to find her strength of character and form her identity:

“I am told that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who listen to the lyrics of songs and immediately apply them to their own lives, and those who let the beat or melody take them, barely registering the words. As you might have guessed, I fall into the former camp.”

No surprise —I too fall into the former camp.

The reason John is so magic is that he appeals equally to both parties. Every single musician I have ever met thinks he’s a genius. (Okay, I’m not cool enough to have met many musicians so this is a small sample size but so far it’s grounded in 100% Mayer-fandom). His sound is easy on the ears for those not musically gifted but full of shiny, mellifluous sparkle for those that attend to search for everything. Lyrically, there’s nothing too cryptic: crisp, heartfelt with just enough poetry to keep your brain engaged. If you look for meaning, you’ll find it; if you want to make scrambled eggs on a Sunday to a wholesome backing track that won’t leave you in an existential spiral, Mayer’s your man.

Unlike other famous break-up idols such as Adele (who endows you to feel nothing but sadness) or Taylor Swift (who famously furnishes you with upbeat revenge), John’s ballads build to a point of no return before an insane guitar solo hits. His music is a constant balance. He keeps us on a knife edge of positivity and desolation. (No surprises but Mayer is a Libra). The majority of his melancholy lyrics are in a major key and the majority of his ecstatic lyrics are woven with flats and sharps which take us in unexpected directions. Listening leaves you brimming with sensibility (even if you’re not aware what about) and that’s why he’s so clever. He provides a rich tapestry for you to work out your own emotions and a melodic journey for you to follow the feelings through to completion.

He’s the only artist that leaves me sobbing at the outro. He is 60 percent composition of a playlist I made entitled: ‘crying in the bath’. Actually, I should probably rename it to ‘crying into the hairdryer’ (my most recent ex bought me the GHD Fusion for Christmas, plus the detachable curl diffuser — sometimes dating a guy with a manbun does have some perks). 

I would go so far as calling John Mayer a classic artist. His music is an unchronological history of guitar trends: part blues, part country, a sprinkle of rock and a dash of the kind of acoustic that only men who wear short-sleeved T-shirts over long sleeved T-shirts seem to be able to write well. It’s All-American in the best way. Aside from his first album Room For Squares which reeks of 90s romcoms and his latest album Sob Rock with the tinge of 80s nostalgia, mostly you are unable to pin Mayer to an era. It could be 2003, it could be 2023, or 1983 and it still bangs. Largely, the man is un-date-able.

Actually, I would never date John Mayer. That man is a walking, talking, fender-strumming, warning sign. (However, if by some mad miracle the offer was presented to me, I would find it impossible to reject). He’s had countless media headlines depict his problematic opinions. A string of famous exes have backlashed at him (Taylor Swift by writing many a song, shock horror). He famously had a long term relationship with Katy Perry and many tracks on his mid-career albums are rumoured to detail his struggle moving on from Jennifer Aniston. (I don’t blame him, I would write a whole album about her too if I had any sort of musical inclination). It’s perplexing that I happily heed romantic solace from a man that I would never accept dating advice from in normal life. So why do I?

Back to my examples of Adele and Taylor Swift: they have amassed globe-shattering success through self-indulgent songs about all their exes. Now ‘pushing forty in the friend zone’, John has had more relationship crumbles than a bashed and bruised Cadbury’s flake. He’s documented this perfectly across the course of eighteen albums, a tonne of exclusive videos and a multitude of unique one-time recordings and collaborations. If anybody knows how to deftly depict the heartache spectrum with a plectrum, it’s John. 

The man may be a player, a misogynist or serial commitment phobe but should we always inherently agree with someone’s values and see ourselves as similar to appreciate their craft? He is harmoniously smart, skilled and self-aware (if not sometimes bordering on mildly neurotic) but aren’t so many talented musicians?

One can wonder if John Mayer has been single so long because it drives his career or his music has careered his soul into forever singledom. All break-ups are different, but largely they are part of the same taxonomy: rejection, distress, regret, nostalgia, acceptance, self-discovery, gratitude. Every John Mayer album is a menagerie of relationship phases from the writing on the wall (Slow Dancing in a Burning Room) to the denial (Half of My Heart, Still Feel Like Your Man) or the all-time-low-wallowing-in-a-trench-of-your-own-self pity (Dreaming with a Broken Heart, Gravity) followed by acceptance (In Repair, I’m Gonna Find Another You) not forgetting John’s signature: the new-found confidence for the single road ahead (Perfectly Lonely, ‘Til The Right One Comes). You might think it dismal, depressing even, that John Mayer repeats this cycle over and over but that’s life. Heartache is inevitable if you’re living correctly. Mayer has been bold and brave enough to share his nuggets of his romantic wisdom with the world. That takes strength and skill to do repeatedly.

People around me now associate me with John Mayer and he’s become synonymous with my identity: my mum texts me every time she hears the plink-plonk of Waiting on the World to Change; I have private jokes with my childhood friend Rosie about mishearing the lyrics ‘I’m perfectly long-legged’; I kept myself sane dancing around my studio apartment to Helpless when I felt exactly that while locked down on the other side of the pandemic-stricken world; and just this Christmas, my sister and I blinked away a synchronised single tear through the car’s rear view mirror, Heart of Life washing over us through the speakers.

With every romantic ending, every rock of life’s boat, I luxuriate with Mayer (quite literally bathing in my own tears as per the playlist reference above). I process it all, step by step until I am ready to be puffed up at the end by John’s twangs of positive prowess. I believe every major life event, good or bad, is a bookmark for the next chapter of self-discovery. John Mayer has been my soundtrack to each and every one so far.

Perhaps everyone has their own John Mayer equivalent. John Mayer was the first artist that educated me about adult existence. He’s helped me understand what it means to lust, love and let go. Plus, he just has so many bangers.

I keep returning because his music fills me with a tingle of hope, the prospect of the next nuanced layer about to be revealed, all wrapped up in something which feels comfortable and familiar. He’s grown up for me and with me. He delineates my coming-of-age. So it’s really no wonder that I return to him when I experience heartache. When you listen to something that reminds you of all the times you were building your identity, you’re reminded of the person you’ve grown out of, but fundamentally, the person you will always be.

So whether it’s because I come for the lyrics or to feel the blues, one thing I know for sure is this: John Mayer will always keep me where the light is. 

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Bonus Content: My Top 10 John Mayer Tracks

Of all time:

1. In Your Atmosphere

2. Heart of Life

3. Stop This Train

4. Vultures

5. Gravity

Current favourites (this week):

1. In Repair

2. ‘Til The Right One Comes

3. New Light

4. Love on The Weekend

5. Half of My Heart