John Mayer Band • Page 11

I wouldn’t really call it “southern rock.” Definitely his most country record, though, and I think he wears that costume well. It just doesn’t have quite as many great songs as all his prior records did.

My ranking:

Continuum
Born & Raised
Heavier Things
Battle Studies
Room for Squares
Paradise Valley
Sob Rock
The Search for Everything

 

I think this is mine too.

 

I really like everything he’s made, but the last two suffer comparatively from 1) his dramatic slowdown in output, and 2) the piecemeal way he released them.

 

I never have listened to his last 2 albums, but I have been feeling some JM recently. Maybe I'll get there

 

I agree, there's still a lot I love about those records but they have more misses and I'm not sure any of those songs are quite up there with his best for me.

 

Use my re-sequence for The Search for Everything. The track order on the official version, IMO, makes no sense.

 

Was that one released as like a series of EPs or am I making that up? I remember it being a weird staggered release and that's probably why I lost interest

 

Honestly hard for me to say, given how near and dear to my heart all those early records are. I really love "Helpless," "In the Blood," "Last Train Home," and "I Guess I Just Feel Like." Not sure any of those stand up to my favorites on, say, Continuum though.

 

Yeah, you've got it. There were supposed to be 12 EPs, one per month for all of 2017. He did the first two-thirds of the album as EPs and then just...gave up on the concept? It was billed as "Vol. 1" too, when the LP version came out, and vol. 2 obviously never materialized.

 

That was so strange. Did he have material ready that he just never released or was he just over ambitious about how prolific he would be?

 

To this day, I have no idea. I have to imagine there's a bunch of stuff in the vault from that project that we've never heard.

 

I know he’s been busy with Dead and Co., but yeah his releases are far and wide now. Who knows when we’ll get new material

 

Personally Battle Studies is my least revisited album, I'd only choose to listen to Who Says. Although Sob Rock is likely the only truly bad album he's made - I do like 3 songs on it however. Also funny that though I'd say there are no bad songs on The Search I'd rank it 3rd bottom in his discography and deem it a poor album. Rather vapid.

How can a man as talented as he, who can hold his own with anyone from Dead & Co to BB King to Keith Urban to R&B artists let alone compose 3-4 great albums of his own, write something like Why You No Love Me 20 years into his career. I'd argue Born was the last time he successfully channeled his ability successfully.

I wonder if over the past decade he's struggled with a musical identity crisis. It's as if he's weighed down by the conflict between his talent, musical interests and desire to continue a level of commercial success by whatever means/quality of output. Or he's simply lost his mojo with his own output and can only achieve it through Dead.

 

Kinda surprised to see that The Search For Everything is so low on people's lists.

Continuum is the clear, far and away number 1 for me, but I've often thought that Search is number 2 most of the time, I don't think it would ever drop out of the top 3 for me even on a bad day.

 

re: "Why You No Love Me"

 

Man at this point who doesn't have a podcast

 

I think that’s for his Sirius XM channel. He had a fun interview with Weird Al a few weeks ago.

 

My friend and I were comparing our top 10 Mayer songs.


In Your Atmosphere - Live
Bold As Love
Stop This Train - Live
War of my Life
Love is A Verb
Something Like Olivia
My Stupid Mouth
On the Way Home
You’re Gonna Live Forever In Me
Why Georgia

 

“In Your Atmosphere” is definitely number one with a bullet.