It’s Been a Long Time Since Twenty-Two

Remember the Funny or Die video John Mayer did about a year ago (featuring celebrity music tester Kristen Bell) that took a day in the life of Mayer as he tries to write a song (if not click here to view it, or not if you want to avoid hearing Mayer and/or Bell curse like sailors at each other). The video got a “funny” because, despite his tabloid fodder for celebrity bed hopping, attempts at standup comedy, and incisive twittering, the music stands up with his three successive albums getting better than the one before.

But I bring up Mayer’s contribution to Funny or Die because it is hard not to think of the skit when listening to his latest album, Battle Studies. With lines like “I don’t remember you look any better but then again I don’t remember you” (Who Says) just sounds like something else that someone who would ask his writing partners to come up with a song about sleeping with a supermodel to make another supermodel jealous would say. And with all the song out relationship, it is hard not to wonder which songs are about Jennifer, Jessica, Minka, Jennifer #2, or any of the other random hot chicks Mayer has been linked to.

Your mind drifts to pondering which starlet is linked to which song because of how mediocre they are. Where Room for Squares was one of the greatest pop albums of the decade, Heavier Things was his blues album, and Continuum was his foray into blues, Battle Studies just sound what you think a clichéd John Mayer album would sound like. Heartbreak Warfare sounds like Mayer just thought of the title sounded cool and forced to write a song about it if it turned out to be good or not. Things just don’t fare much better with titles like All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye, Perfectly Lonely, War of My Life, and Do You Know Me are depressingly sad as their title suggests.

The few times Mayer tries to break out of the mold of the album, he just falls flat. Who Says just sounds like a retreat of Stop This Train, but with a clumsily pot metaphor. Half of My Heart, featuring Taylor Swift, is his attempt at an eighties style duet, but it comes close to parody and barely constitutes a duet as Swift is just resigned to backing vocals to the point you wonder why even bother. Then Friends, Lovers or Nothing just sounds like an extension of In Repair.

His Robert Johnson cover of Crossroads is the lone non-relationship to the point it just sticks out like a sore thumb. And top of it, it just isn’t a very good version with it heavy organ thump and it would have been a better choice to have included his take on Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on Fire (which is an iTunes bonus track with Battle Studies) which is the better cover and would have fit in better with the album thematically.

Thanks not to say all of Battle Studies is a disappointment. Assassin sounds different than anything else on the album and is the one love is war metaphor that works on the album with a not so shocking lyrically twist at the end. And even though Edge of Love starts out slow, it kicks into gear when Mayer lets loose on his guitar. But the two songs just can’t keep Battle Studies from being the weakest of Mayer’s career. So John, the next time Kristen Bell tells you that your song sucks, please take her advice and go back to the drawing board and avoid songs about making supermodels jealous.

Song to Download – Assassin

Battle Studies gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.