Mayer, John

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JOHN MAYER

Born: Bridgeport, Connecticut, 16 October 1977

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Room for Squares (2001)

Hit songs since 1990: "No Such Thing," "Your Body Is a Wonderland"

As teenage and college girls of Generation Y (the children of baby boomers) outgrew *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys, John Mayer turned them on to more mature, thoughtful music that nevertheless retained the sentiment and soft seduction of their half-forgotten bubblegum idols.

Mayer grew up with a middle-class family in Fairfield, Connecticut, but was entranced by the idea of breaking out of the tranquil lifestyle and pursuing an individualistic life of music. He caught the music bug at age thirteen, after hearing a neighbor's cassette of the late Texas blues great Stevie Ray Vaughan. At fifteen, he started playing professionally and dropped out of high school for two years.

In 1997 he was accepted by the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. While the pop rock world is notoriously unimpressed by official credentials, Berklee is one of the few institutions that has had success in formally training pop musicians. However, Mayer felt stifled by what he saw as the school's emphasis on technical virtuosity over creativity. So after three months, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, with a friend who was originally from the city.

He found the booming metropolis an excellent live music market—plenty of people went out at night, yet audiences were not overly jaded or demanding. However, the experience separated him a bit from his blues roots. For one thing, he tended to write introspective, self-deprecating lyrics, while blues is more geared toward extroversion and accusation. Another more pragmatic hurdle was the fact that it was tough for a no-name newcomer to assemble a band. Therefore, he performed as a solo, acoustic act, which gave his repertoire some touches of the coffeehouse troubadour.

Audiences warmed up to his skillful, jazz-influenced guitar playing and his soothing, grainy voice that sounded like it was coming from someone far more mature than his years. While Mayer has always been a guitar natural, he said singing well requires a concentrated effort.

Mayer went the acoustic route for his first EP Inside Wants Out (1999). Drums are absent from most cuts, and the only obvious studio touch is some vocal overdubbing. Its first four tracks, "Back to You," "No Such Thing," "My Stupid Mouth," and "Neon," would show up on his debut album Room for Squares (2001). "Neon" is memorable for its incongruity—Mayer sings about a lover who is into "mixed drinks and techno beats" over a folksy, percolating guitar solo. His guitar playing also signals that while he may not have been interested in being the most technically proficient student, he possesses chops to spare.

He was discovered by Columbia Records subsidiary Aware at a South by Southwest Music Festival showcase in Austin, Texas, in 2000. Later that year, he began recording Room for Squares with producer John Alagia (Ben Folds Five, Dave Matthews Band). This time, Mayer used a full rock combo to fill out his raw inspiration. His slightly raspy voice draws comparisons to Dave Matthews, while his confessional lyrics and acoustic leanings make him seem an ideal counterpart to the other Generation Y breakout of the early 2000s, Norah Jones. His first single "No Such Thing" rocked along with an aggressive tempo and unusual but catchy chord progressions. With musings about high school memories and trying to avoid a boring fate, Mayer created an anthem for aimless yet ambitious twenty-somethings going through what he calls the "quarterlife crisis."

The second single, "Your Body Is a Wonderland," a new song not included on Inside Wants Out, is an acoustic-framed ballad whose success signaled pent-up demand in the pop world for direct, sexy, understandable lyrics. The song won a Grammy Award in 2003 for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

Mayer, now more than able to hire a backing band, showcased his well-honed performance skills on double-live Any Given Thursday (2003). He returns to his blues roots on the despairing "City Love" and lets bassist David LaBruyere get funky on "No Such Thing."

Millions of young people who had put away their prefab pop records were still in the market for enjoyable, inoffensive music. Mayer helped them through their college and young professional years with lyrics that treated them as adults and accessible melodies they could sing along with.