What makes a good songwriter? Let us assume for a brief second that you produce cool music. Or, that you write great lyrics. So would that guarantee you success? Would it ever be enough to make you stand out from the crowd? The crowd, mind you is not composed of hundreds and thousands but of a million and a half people who still expect music to liven them up!
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Well, if you are in a certain United States of America where the term longevity in music industry is a rarity held on only by exceptional talents born in a light year considering the competition and the exceeding amount of expectations fans have of their musical icons, then take it for sure that composing good music isn’t alone enough. You need to be like a star shining away from the brightly illuminated galaxy composed of several twilights of many a common musical coup or band whose combined weightage stands light when compared to yours.
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You need to be like what the Rolling Stones or the Doors were in the sexed up pot smoking Sixties. Better of yet, you need to be like the Boss, ” Bruce Springsteen”. Or to put it simply- you need to be John Mayer, the 37 year old Connecticut born American singer-songwriter behind the sterling success of some timeless rock music, ever since his pleasantly strummed guitar-strings married his amazing talent to produce some vivid melodies since 2003.
Being John Mayer
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It’s surely not easy being John Mayer! It cannot be for a Rock musician in today’s globalized and music depending world where melodies aren’t just a simple breakaway from life’s everyday troubles but a way to create lasting memories. He is rich. He is only 37 and is quite a few girlfriend’s old. Yet, despite a personal life that borders on the mirage of being one of a hopeless romantic whilst churning some timeless Jewels in the wake of back-to-back smash hit records, John Mayer’s public image often overlaps his musical talent.
He isn’t an easy pushover. For sure, he is not here to please crowds. Nor is John Mayer your average musician who will contend with not one but seven Grammy awards and several other highly celebrated but prodigious awards and merits. That searing but charming voice visibly reminding one of the edgy superiority it has over those who claim to sing in a mellow voice almost always builds up a sense of romanticism we all crave to derive from music.
Music and it’s ethos for the 1.91 meter tall American icon isn’t a mere aphrodisiac. It is the most compelling sense of fluidity that Mayer has ever attained from a larger than life journey of his. And, his life is the stuff legends are made of.
Playing more than just the guitar
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For years he has been trying desperately hard to break away from the playboy image attributed to him but purely for his own antics “off the stage”.
The handsome bloke and his charming smile is a little too hard for girls to give amiss. But then, while it does afford Mayer many a mushy evening in the plushest of pubs in his current resident city L.A., it has been having a terrible hangover sort of an affect over his musical pedigree, one which is an outstanding citation for his incredible talent. It is rumored that good old Johnny Boy steps into some of the most outrageously expensive eateries in up market LA, New York and London and tugs away a few rounds of Grey Goose, his preferred liquid for self-destruction whilst charming his way into the hearts of the many teenage lovelies whose name he forgets to recollect when the night is done and dusted. But, these are just few of the perks of being one of Rock Music’s great star.
A ladies man, John Mayer’s lyrics that border on the romantic strumming of the heart and the enchantment of love and its often hollow but mostly sublime after effects may have done him a great deal of help in getting along with renowned celebs such as Jennifer Aniston and Katy Perry, two of his most intense love sonnets. But, he is back now to the musical stage where he belongs and away from the cushy comforts that aren’t perhaps as comforting and tenable as he thought they would, especially since breaking up with Perry, his last girlfriend.
Bringing incredible music to life
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You could ask any average rock fan in an America confronted with too much of musical noise these-days to the most caustic of rock music critics in the fancy faraway lands of Eastern Europe about what’s best in John Mayer’s music, and the answer most will give you would be the mellifluence of his music. It cannot not happen that most of his Mayer’s songs won’t light up your face.
If you are feeling spaced out in life and amidst despair and the burden that the routine mundane stuffs up on you- just switch on his debut album Room for Squares. If you are stuck in a bad day and are returning from a nightmarish day at work- listen to Belief from Continuum, his second album from more than a decade released in 2006. If you are having a hard time with your loved one, then go for- Heavier Things (his first ever album released even earlier in 2003). Truth certainly is that there is a John Mayer song for every occasion, be it marked for your true love or in remembrance of someone special who refuses to see eye to eye. There are songs for lost ones, for the poetic, hippies and bohemians. There’s a Paradise Valley(last album released in 2013 as he works to release his forthcoming release) of emotion, heart-wrenching feeling and a longing to be longed by and longed for- love in each of his songs. Guys, lovers, romanticists and ‘play it cool’ sugar daddies world-over make up to their partners through his most famous record ever, the smash-hit “Your Body is a Wonderland”, released in 2001. Even for father’s out there who dote on their little ones, the hit record “Daughters” can stir up many emotions.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be incorrect to state that with John Mayer- not just the United States but the whole of world music has a reservoir of talent whose uniqueness cannot be measured merely by the stack of hit selling records and whose affirmation to the ecstasy and delight music is known to bring fans is nearly synonymous with Mayer’s own dependence on music.
A little bit of a recreational drug use and those frequent fall-ins and fall-outs with liquor are just temporary escapes that allow an artist of the capacity of John Mayer to discover a world where he can conveniently switch into and get out of when creating music becomes a ‘task’ and not an ‘obsession’. A self-confessed Michael Jackson fan and one who grew listening to Nirvana and Bon Jovi and reading Rolling Stones magazine, Mayer’s love for the bottle at one stage, since his break-off from Katy Perry even threatened to cut short his wonderful career. It is a delight to be having a sober and mellow charming guy between us whose thankfully never had to walk into a rehab facility and that appreciating the talents of contemporaries and doing several live shows across Europe and Latin America ever since 2011 have kept the cool bloke happily occupied.
A lot to live up to
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A certain sense of nostalgia unavoidably creeps up as you listen to John’s painfully wry yet sublime voice. Recognized widely as the best vocalist out there in tandem with Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Matchbox Twenty’s Rob Thomas and U2’s Bono, Mayer’s musical creativity is as inspiring as his command over his lyric writing.
It is but a truth and still a vague representation of this lesser celebrated icon’s success that there aren’t many musicians out there who can control the ambiance and interest of a packed musical duo with just his sterling charming vocals giving company to bass guitar. John Mayer has pulled of several sensational performances in many American cities such as LA, New York, Boston, Ohio, Little Rock and many many more.
With the soothing tapestry those guitar strumming fingers bring to the forefront of an audience crazed and captivated by the serenity of his calming presence, there’s an element of universality in his pure music. Just take our advice for it.
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If you are ever tainted and rendered incomplete by the frivolous and appalling ways of an all too cruel a world around you, all you got to do is to simply lie down on a cushy sofa in your secluded confines and switch over John Mayer’s ” Everything is not broken”. Chances are, before you can come to think of it, your world would have got its long lost “gravity”.