By: Jalena Noakes
After being spoiled with single after single for the past 12 years, John Mayer fans were antsy to hear what (and when) John Mayer would be releasing again. It was a seemingly three-year hiatus from any original music, but it felt like a lifetime.
Following the recent footsteps of Drake and Rihanna, Mayer took an unconventional approach to releasing his music. He announced on Facebook that he would be releasing this next album, The Search for Everything, in “waves”; one wave would be released every month with each wave containing four songs. The Search for Everything-Wave One contains the previously released “Love on the Weekend” as well as “Moving On and Getting Over”, “Changing”, and “You’re Gonna Live Forever in Me”. Each song takes on Mayer’s lyrical interpretation of his personal and relational growth, combined with a 70s pop sound within the mix.
If hearing that we would have four new John Mayer songs each month wasn’t enough, I was excited to hear that he used most of the same musicians and engineers from his 2006 release, Continuum, which earned Mayer a Grammy and debuted at #2 in Billboard’s Top 200 Album charts. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mayer prided himself in the fact that this album’s success would “prove that you can - and should - explore as an artist. That success means freedom, not confinement. That you can take chances, making music that you love without worrying about their commercial reception, and then consciously return to making mainstream records with that much more depth to bring to them. This proves that we can release music in any way that feels native to the work, or how we want it to be presented.”
It’s impossible for John Mayer to disappoint, or maybe that’s just my biased opinion. He was smart in releasing his album in this way, because he’s attracting attention from all audiences and taking part in re-shaping the traditions of the music industry into something that’s more centered around how the artist wants to release their music, rather than letting the label decide. I'm looking forward to hearing what these next few waves sound like and watching John Mayer dominate the charts again!