By Zac Taylor
Managing Editor
Does Battle Studies sound like you thought it was going to? Of course it’s well-constructed, impeccably produced, and relatively inoffensive, in spite of saying the s-word in the first track and smoking dope in the fourth.
“Heartbreak Warfare” is indeed one of the tracks that is worth the $1.29 per-song iTunes price, but is so catchy it will more than likely feel overplayed by Christmas, so enjoy it while it lasts. Mayer flexes his lyric-writing muscles in “Half of My Heart,” the so-called ‘duet’ with young country-pop mogul Taylor Swift (she sings “Can’t stop loving you” a few times in the outro; nice, but a pretty transparent marketing ploy.)
The first single, “Who Says,” luscious and acoustic, sounds like a tune from Tom Petty’s Wildflowers record, while music video (currently pushing 2 million hits on YouTube) shows our hero carousing around Manhattan like a modern day James Dean. “Perfectly Lonely” is a nice enough song, with a Motowny groove, while “Assassin” is Mayer’s take on Sting’s “Stolen Car”—sexy, intriguing storyline supported by world music textures with pretty off-kilter song form for a major pop record.
And naturally, as any bona fide bluesman would do, he covers Robert Johnson/Eric Clapton’s “Crossroads.” This rendition is cool approach to a classic rock staple, which shows Mayer’s been listening to the same stuff as Derek Trucks. While some of the guitar licks are delightfully filthy, on this track and others, do they sound out of place on such a polished record?
Upon first listen, some of the lyrical content seems boring (and some of it is), but there is depth to the seemingly banal content that may be worthy of Great American Songbook. For instance, in the coda of “Friends, Lovers, or Nothing” he exclaims, “Anything other than yes is no, anything other than stay is go, anything less than I love you is lying,” with some gospel-like oohs and ahs that really fill up the final moments nicely.
Has Johnny grown since Continuum? Was he supposed to? Did you want him to reinvent pop, blues, and rock into some original amalgam to further solidify himself as the next Sting or Paul Simon or whomever? If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s prompting these questions, which is telling in itself.
Check out this Groove Exclusive Interview with John Mayer during his weeklong visit to Berklee in October 2008:
