23 April 2007

reply to my older brother

First off: I must reply to my brother's call about favorite artist and songs. I thought long and hard about who i would say, and pretty much without a doubt my answer is John Mayer. Mayer's music is loved by all generations. My mom likes him, my older brother likes him, I like him, my little brother likes him, and even my little sister can be caught every once and a while singing a mayer tune. Debuting with what I would call his "pop" album Room for Squares gave us hits such as "No Such Thing" "My Stupid Mouth" and "Why Georgia" and Mayer very quickly became one of my favorite music artists. After the release of his second album Heavier Things so came "Clarity" and "Bigger than My Body" (and the overly played on the radio) "Daughters." Then he did something awesome. He decided to team up with bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Steve Jordan to create the John Mayer Trio where I first heard one of my all time favorites: "Vultures." As sad as I was to not get a chance to hear them live like my brother, Jon, Try! is an album frequented on my iPod. With newest album Continuum, I feel like Mayer has outdone himself. He included my favorite "Vultures" on the album with the amazing song "Stop the Train."

I think what keeps me going back to Mayer is his incredible ability to write catchy poetry-like lyrics to an amazing melody:

"played a quick game of chess with the salt and pepper shakers."
"had a talk with my old man, said help me understand; he said turn sixty-eight, you'll renogotiate.
"some of us--we're hardly ever here, the rest of us were born to disappear. how do i stop myself from being just a number?"
"i make the most of all the sadness, you be a bitch because you can. you try to hit me just to hurt me"

the list could go on... point to make: mayer is brilliant. he may be dating an idiot, but his ability as a musician to have such a broad spectrum of fans ranging from many different generations is proof of true talent that will be around for decades to come.

2 comments:

ou Lua said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Katie said...

:) I was waiting for you to respond to Jon's post... I too love Continuum- one of my fav albums of the year, and my favorite song is known to me as #8, known by the rest of the world as "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room". Just hearing the first three seconds of this song puts a smile on my face- romantic, soothing, makes you want more. Love love love.