In Defense Of...John Mayer

If you've been remotely alive in the 21st century, you'll know that two modern crests of singer-songwriter pop are two artists simply known as Jack Johnson and John Mayer.

Jack Johnson seems like the type of guy who never had one bad day in his life. His dog, his wife, and his pet guinea pig could all die at the same time, but if there's a beach nearby, his sorrow would just wash away. And then he'd get high and write songs for a movie version of Curious George.

John Mayer seems like the guy that would be more vapid and uncaring about his work. In between making albums, (and clearly having a resemblance to this blog writer) he has had a relationship with pretty much every famous person you've ever wanted to...meet. Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Love-Hewitt, and etc. prove that the guy's basically proven that his music and personality is so charming that he's everything women love and that men frickin' despise. His songs get passed off as cornball -- which they are if we're referring to songs like the ridiculously idealistic "No Such Thing" -- but he gets shunned for having no musical depth or discernible talent, which isn't really true at all.

Mayer is a pop idealist. He has progressed to writing songs that know fullwell that they are intended for mainstream audiences, but never over-simplifies his lyrics and adds a nice pastiche of influences to his sound. This is probably most evident on his 2006 album Continuum, which actually has some nice strumming and a pretty good cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Bold as Love". And anybody that can do a Hendrix cover that doesn't disgrace Hendrix's music, they deserve to be honored.

I'm not going to act like Mayer's a great artist by any stretch of the imagination. He overemphasizes themes of love in his music, but he has a nice interest in the human condition. On another Continuum track, "Waiting on the World to Change", he dives into why people his age -- i.e. the 20somethings crowd -- are so apathetic about the shape of the world and that maybe a sense of optimism could help rile the people. It's an effortless pop song that is done with a ton of effort. Happy chords drown out any sense of negativity you could find, and while most cynics would hate it for Mayer's idealism, the song works as pop and as a well-written message song. Mayer doesn't beat the audience over the head, despite the simple message. He isn't commanding his audience to blame something on somebody else, but rather BE the change however you see it. It's a cheesy idea, but I'd rather have Mayer's simplicity than a band like Green Day droning on about how much they hate the President without even thinking about the changes they would do to make things better.

His style of playing has evolved. He's dug more into artists such as the legendary Curtis Mayfield to get a sort of old-school R&B sound to mix in with the acoustic nature of his works. He's had less of the cornball lyrics with each successive album that he has made, and even got into a fight with Columbia Records over the release of Continuum. He even made a stirring cover of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" that, as per usual, a lot of girls love and not many guys have even heard it.

So yeah, even if he's basically living a fantasy life, I like the guy. Plus, he's pretty funny from time to time actually. So that clearly has to mean the guy's not as grating as your average singer-songwriter. Right?