“I just want to be liked,” croons John Mayer, 23-year-old superstar rookie. Now would be a good time to point out that the third track on John Mayer’s first album, 2001’s multiplatinum smash Room for Squares, is called “My Stupid Mouth,” and begins by describing a promising dinner date his stupid mouth ruins. That is also the saddest thing about Sob Rock’s other nine songs. “To me the saddest part of it is that it’s wrapped up in a soft-rock banger.” “Those words in that order, that’s about getting hurt so deep it hits you right in the kid, where you can’t even form sentences correctly,” Mayer explained in another interview included with a physical PR-stunt zine stapled and mailed to my house. It is a small miracle that this chorus doesn’t sound incredibly stupid-a small miracle but precious little consolation. It’s a tiki bar, fine: rotting pineapple stench in the air, somebody pushing a broom already, some jackass put Taylor Swift on the jukebox as a prank, and here is John Mayer, international playboy, alone, head in his hands, elbows propped up on the bar, softly crooning his ass off as he always does and always will:
“Why You No Love Me” sounds like the narrator of the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” three hours and 10 tequila shots later, plus an 11th tequila shot thrown in his face by the lady he was attempting to seduce by singing “Kokomo.” Now it’s closing time.
Which brings us back to “Why You No Love Me,” a quite lovely song too forlorn to bother with proper grammar. Anything past 8 percent and people say, ‘Got it, next.’”Īnd so on the other 92 percent of Sob Rock, John Mayer sounds legitimately isolated and rejected and remorseful and sad and resigned to permanent sadness.
“So it was about moving the line back, and it turns out that-dialing back from 100 percent full symmetrical-neon-sunglasses ’80s-you really only need 8 percent to make people understand the vision. He talked up this halcyon era’s “dynamic innocence,” its “pump-your-fist-in-a-convertible” sense of wonder and promise.īut he also talked about how far the bit could go: “Yes, it’s funny to hear a chorused Jackson guitar going through the same amp they used back then, but I had to figure out this genetic tightrope walk, where if it has too much retro DNA, two things happen: I lose interest, and I don’t believe it,” Mayer continued. “Yeah, it was ‘Pretend someone made a record in 1988 and shelved it and it was just found this year,’” is how Mayer recently explained the idea to the great fashion/rock newsletter Blackbird Spyplane. Let’s make clear immediately that your boy commits to the bit until it ceases to be a bit at all. A tasty but desperately lonely Clapton riff wallowing at the uneasy nexus of “Wonderful Tonight,” “Tears in Heaven,” and (spiritually) “Cocaine.” An ornately dug Tunnel of No Love Whatsoever. A turquoise-tinted illumination of Dire Straits. A guilty-conscience-ridden End of the Innocence. Rock?) write themselves but wither in the mere presence of that smolder-is an abjectly lovelorn ’80s-soft-rock goof. Indeed, Mayer’s irony-proof eighth album-the jokes ( Saab Rock? S.O.B. His gaze is smoldering so hard it takes you forever to fully absorb the haircut. You’ve probably already seen the album cover, but I need you to look at it again.įor a not-funny album, this is a legitimately great gag: Come for the Reagan-core The Nice Price sticker, stay for the Apple-pandering price tag and subtle (?) hint of dopey geometric art. What we’ve got here is an impressively rendered, baffling tonal conundrum.
Sob Rock also includes my favorite John Mayer song in the past 12 years Sob Rock also includes, to my mind, the two saddest songs he’s ever sung. The song is from a new John Mayer album called Sob Rock. What we got here is a new John Mayer song called “Why You No Love Me.” Not a typo.