John Mayer recently sat down for an interview with NPR, where he talked about his new album, and of course, himself. Here are some highlights from the interview:
Talia Schlanger: This is a record that people are calling a pop record.
"John Mayer: Hm, my version of it, yeah."
We haven't heard from you for a few years; what you offered before was a little rootsier, a little more Laurel Canyon-esque. Was this a deliberate choice — to dive back into the pop machine?
"Yeah. I don't think that I took a break from it because it was a machine, I think I took a break from it because my ears get tired. Not just from recording a record, but from touring for so long."
Was there one song that started it all, where you're like, "Oh yeah, this is the inception of what this album is supposed to be"?
"That's a very good question. There were a few. There were a couple of weeks in the very beginning of making this record that were astounding weeks. Astounding writing weeks. The songs wouldn't stop. I started frightening myself.
Each song just made me write another song. I had this run where I was like — this is about forgetting that we're making a product and just writing. I wanna go so deep that it transcends the traditional contract of "musician who is known goes in studio and makes songs for his waiting public." I drilled so much deeper than that, it was like — there is no public right now. There is no musician. There is no star, there is no nothing. ... It was almost like there is no John Mayer.
And then I realized from that point on, it better either make you hurt or make you feel something or make you move, but it can't just be music for music's sake at this point. So a lot of stuff didn't make it either because it wasn't true or it was a little bit too ambitious. ... I had one song on here that sounded like a Black Keys song, and it was awesome until I started singing on it. And then I would listen back it, and lest anyone believe that I'm way into myself — I mean I'm way into myself, but I don't love myself, but I'm literally into myself."
What do you mean?
"Well, like, I'm about myself, I'm self-centered, but I don't think everything I do is great. But I think about everything I do all of the time."
Well, we all do — we're all humans. But do you feel like you do that more?
"More, all the time. All I do is think about what I do. Horrible, it's a horrible existence."
I'm wondering if there's a difference, like in the early days when you write a song like "Your Body Is A Wonderland" or "Why Georgia" or "Dreaming With A Broken Heart" — it's only your friends or your family who know who this is about. And I don't wanna play the proper noun game — I'm not interested in that — but I do want to know how that changes the process, when you have people out there who are gonna speculate and guess who songs on this record are about. Do you have to approach the writing in a different way?
"I think I've always done a very good job of converting personal information into universal songwriting. And like I've said before, if I do a good enough job of writing the song, people aren't going to be distracted the whole time the song is playing. Ultimately, you want people to not care about anything that led to the song. You want them to care they've got it, you want them to care that they've got something to jam to or relate to. When I wrote "Stop This Train" — that song means a lot to a lot of people and I've learned that over the years, and that means a lot to me — they're not thinking about my parents, they're not thinking about Richard and Margaret Mayer, they're thinking about their parents.
So when I say, "Still Feel Like Your Man," I think people understand the directionality of that in terms of a singer singing to an idea, but that's where it ends. And then people listen to it and they think about who they still feel connected to. Obviously, the tabloids and the magazines or whatever — it is an epilogue to a public relationship, so I get that. But maybe — he says as he throws his arms up — maybe there's people out there who can say, "Oh, he really did feel something." And I don't think that's the worst thing in a world where a lot of people might have imagined or might still imagine that I don't really have emotions about this stuff. I think you'd probably find some people if you'd poll them — "He just goes out with people." Like no, listen to this record and you'll be like, "Oh, that's not an animal. He's not an animal."
Read the full interview at NPR.
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