I have had a real problem liking John Mayer for a while.
I hope you noticed that I didn’t say that I had a problem liking his music.
I never had a problem with his music…always thought that he was really talented and that he produced some of the best music out there.
I just couldn’t stand some of the things I was reading in his interviews and I couldn’t divorce the music from the musician.
I thought he was a real turd.
Here he was…a young man with a talent…plowing through the feminine landscape and commenting on it all with a lack of kindness that was amazing. He was still playing some great music…but his big mouth was getting him into trouble every time he opened it. Every thing I heard about him that wasn’t about the music was a real turn-off.
I couldn’t stand that.
Here’s a YouTube commentary from David Wilcox that I really appreciated and that put it all into a slightly different perspective for me.
I’ve said it before that I drive mail for the USPS.
I listen to audio books…music…talk radio while I’m making my deliveries.
Lately I’ve been listening again to the latest John Mayer album…the one that David Wilcox refers to in the YouTube clip….”Born and Raised”.
It’s a great album.
It’s a great album that addresses some of the things that were giving me problems with “John Mayer the Person”…like I really had any reason to include that whole mess in my appreciation of his music.
Like I had any reason to judge him like that.
That’s the sad thing about music these days. It used to be that before I had access to every bit of information that I wanted to uncover…I’m the one digging it up, I’m the one listening, I’m the one turning over every stone…that I could take music on its own terms.
I never had access to anything that would sour me to an artist’s music.
Maybe that’s something to shoot for …stay away from the tabloid information and just listen to the music again.
It might be kind of refreshing to just take the art at face value for a while.
Here’s one of the songs from the album I mentioned.