John Mayer: Born and Raised

Genre(s): Country, Folk, Rock
Release Date: May 22, 2012

I have to admit, it took me a while to brave this latest release from John Mayer. After Continuum and Where the Light Is, I thought I was looking at the next Stevie Ray Vaughn. In previous work, John Mayer has come up as a young man with more soul and guts than we've seen from any artists in 20-30 years. His next attempt, Battles Studies, was hit or miss. The song with Taylor Swift was definitely a miss, that's for sure. When I saw the promo picks for Born and Raised with Mayer in a cowboy hat, I have to admit, I was scared. I did not wait 2 years for one of my favorite artists to for sake the blues and turn country on me.

Finally, I sat down and gave the album a chance. I mean, REALLY gave the album a chance. I listened to the melodies, read through the lyrics, and really took the album in. Just listening at face value, it sounds like a country album. A slightly low-key Nashville hopeful. However, if you dig a little deeper, and look at the lyrics, you'll find that Mayer really bares his soul in these lyrics. After his antics with interviews in Rolling Stone and Playboy, followed by 2 years of dead silence to the media, Mayer has finally found an "appropriate" outlet. He addresses his insecurities, fears, and mistakes, without calling out anyone else. (This isn't a quality that Taylor Swift could boast. Maybe she'll take a page out of Mayer's book and stop writing songs with her ex's names in them.)

I think that Mayer's hit single, "Shadow Days," was brilliantly titled, packaged, videoed, recorded, and marketed. For the past 2 years, Mayer has lived in the shadows, and prefers it that way. In his most recent interview with Rolling Stone, he shows that he doesn't expect to return to the limelight, dating the photog's favorite starlets. Mayer has packed his bags and moved to Montana, and will likely spend quite a while in the Big Sky Country, recording , but not playing the media's games. Lyrics like, "I'm a good man with a good heart/Had a tough time, got a rough start/But I finally learned to let it go" are really turning him into an open book. Not in the way that Twitter or media frenzy did while he dated one hot blonde after another, but in the way that he better understands himself, and where he went wrong.

Born and Raised reads like an apology to the masses. An apology to the fans for only putting half of his heart into Battles Studies. An apology to the great musicians he's been compared to, for not living up to their good names. An apology to the media for his absence. And an apology to anyone else who doesn't like it.

Instead of ruining the album with "spoilers," instead I invite you to track down the jacket notes (digital or the actual CD) and read it for yourself. Maybe then you'll see this as more than just another country album. Like many of the great before him, Mayer has undergone his first major resurrection. And it is a success.