Why Guitar Players HATE John Mayer

y'all know this video was gonna have to happen eventually so let me know what was the first John Mayer song you ever listened to and how did you feel about it at the time going back about a year I was walking around the city after a gig as I usually do just looking for something to eat and I happened upon this barbecue restaurant and this I walked in I saw that there was a blues jam happening and I asked the owner and he told me that this happened every week and I was like blown away I'd never really been to an open blues jam before where a bunch of like-minded guitar players would just get together play some 12 fart Blues we had drummers there there were bass players there and it was just so incredible to like I said see those people there on a weekly basis and one night in particular the opener started talking and he was this incredible jazz guitar player from Nashville and at the end of his set he happened to say would you guys mind if we played a cover real quick of this really special song and I was like I don't mind at all my guy and he opened up with this riff [Music] instantly I was like yes I love John Mayer and something funny happened the guy sitting next to me said and I'll never forget I hate John Mayer and no this is not Mike doing his whole acronym thing he legitimately said I hate John Mayer and I was like oh why do you hate John Mayer and he just kind of mumbled and he was like well look you don't hate John Mayer and as a guitar player I was understandably taken aback but I had to go to the bathroom look in the mirror and say Mike it's not worth it your parole officer said you only have one more chance but in all seriousness if you've watched any of my videos here or watched anyone on Instagram or just talk to any guitar player in the past 15 to 20 years you've probably noticed that John Mayer has kind of had this cult following amongst guitar players and for good reason he's a legendary player who's definitely been one of the more influential factors in shaping the blues and pop sound over the last two decades but much like every single musician to have ever lived you have your fans and you have those people that don't like you sometimes for valid reasons or for not so being the John Mayer synth that I am and having basically made a career out of making fun of how much I love John Mayer I wanted to take a moment to not just talk about that love to talk about the reasons why people might not like John Mayer or might not appreciate some of his music but wanting to go deeper than the guy who I met at that blues jam in doing my research and then just remembering conversations I've had with different guitar players and different musicians the first reason why people might not like John Mayer is perception and I'm talking specifically about his musicianship I don't know if you've ever heard the phrase perception is reality and in my experience that is the truest of the truest of the truest phrases specifically when it comes to music and guitar playing for a lot of people who don't really love his music the first thing that comes to mind when you mention the name John Mayer is probably [Music] foreign you see the perception that they have in their minds is of the pop star the guy who came up in the early 2000s singing that Your Body Is a Wonderland trying to get that really radio Sound and probably thinking to themselves this is just the guy who wants to be number one on the Billboard Hot 100 star and collect as many of those as he can and to be fair to their point it's no secret that he didn't start out as this really shreddy blues guitar player he started off with a room for square album doing the whole acoustic thing and don't get me wrong I don't hate your body as a Wonderland the bridge of that song has a hand stretch that's very very difficult and very very underrated like I said if all you think of him as is that first perception with the pop thing and you don't really like pop music and I've even heard mayor mention this I remember when I saw him in concert right before he played Your Body Is a Wonderland he went guys this next song I'm about to play is a song that for a long time I was ashamed of because it's who I was not who I am and on the other side you don't get a second chance at a first impression a lot of people just listen to one song and then just say this artist isn't for me without giving anything a Second Glance and I think that goes a lot into like the Spotify age and the age of instant gratification and wanting to like something immediately but if you do listen to that room for squares album and you actually don't like pop stuff or if you just don't like Blues in general you might have a valid reason for not listening to a lot of his music but I do however think this is the most common reason that I've heard different guitar players say that they don't like John Mayer the second reason why I've heard guitar players say they don't love John Mayer this one is really specifically for John Mayer fans is the Continuum effect yeah Continuum that album the first time I listened to it I was floored everyone was floored this album isn't even just loved amongst guitar players I remember specifically watching the hip hop artist J Cole talk about some of his favorite songs of all time and of course the first thing that you would think about is that you probably have a lot of other hip-hop artists on there but no he pulled Stop This Train and that's not unusual especially amongst guitar players like we were saying this album has become kind of the gold standard of mayor's career and I think a lot of musical artists if they had had an album that iconic or that pig would have instantly said okay I found my thing I did continue them I did slow dancing I'm this guy now but he didn't really do that a couple years later about six years after Continuum he switched up the flow moved to Montana and wrote a folky Americana album called Born and Raised and everyone was kind of like wait what is happening now you see the thing with that is I cannot count the amount of John Mayer fans who I've had this specific conversation with where they say something along the lines of I love John Mayer Continuum is my favorite I don't really love the folky stuff I just wish you would make more of Continuum and one of the cool things I think that's just being a fan seeing him that struck me is now he's always changing his sound he didn't stay in the pop stuff like we were talking about before without changing and he didn't stay in the blue stuff like continue he went to like Americana and folk stuff I mean this album is so much more acoustic driven the the lead single in the album doesn't have a wicked guitar solo in it the intro the song is just four simple chords played on the acoustic guitar foreign this album still has some great bluesy moments but with it being more acoustically driven you're gonna get some pushback and you're gonna have some fans who say things like I'm here for the old stuff but I do think in a couple different ways you get to see him shine with his lead guitar work in Born and Raised like in the solo to something like Olivia and I'm not even talking about the acoustic version which I think is one of the more difficult things to master that he's done on that specific album when he starts off with these big licks over this slightly modified Well Bar Blues progression like I said if you don't like bulky or Americana stuff it's not wrong if you don't like that album but I think there are some really underappreciated blues guitar moments that get overshadowed by the fact that he's changing up his genres not necessarily what some fans might have been expecting at the time and the third reason that I think specifically guitar players might not like John Mayer comes down to personal Antics and I'm not TMZ I'm not really gonna break down that here any celebrity ever is going to get tabloid stuff so I think the last one that I've heard only a handful of times is that he's a Stevie Ray Vaughan clone or that he's a copycat of some other artists that have come before and this is one that I've never fully understood because you kind of get into a Greta Van Fleet conversation where there's artists who pay homage and sometimes like in the case of Mayor with like a Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jimi Hendrix you get a guy who is clearly drawn a lot of influence from these players that came before one of the coolest quotes that I've heard is good artists take great artists steal not to say John Mayer is straight up stolen or copyrighted or plagiarized any of those artists but it's cool to see someone who I think has really in a respectful way been able to pay homage like I said to those artists who came before and this one is a little less valid I think than some of the other reasons where like if you genuinely don't like pop music then room for squares might not be for you I think it's really intriguing to break down not just the chords of a solo from an artist I love or why this note works over this specific Harmony and your perception of that artist can not only change over time but really be impacted by those intangible factors especially with me starting a career making fun of just how much of a John Mayer simp that I am I wanted to take a look at not just why I love this artist or use my acronym why I have appreciation that's earned for him but why might some people dislike that and why might I disagree or agree and John Mayer on the completely off chance that you're watching this thanks for doing what you do but anyway thank you so much for watching like I said cool to get a different perspective and if you want more videos like this let me know as always all the gear shown in this video and I pulled out the acoustic got it from Sweetwater if you want to know more specifically how to get any of those tones or about any of those guitars link is in the description make sure to like And subscribe if you had a good time and most important of all have a fantastic [Music]

Channel: Mike Cole

Views: 591,646

Keywords:

Id: -Y2_QIfaZ6g

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/why_not_you_instead]

It's a song called I don't need no doctor.

Ray Charles version

John Scofield and John Mayer version

John Mayer WTLI version

[u/darkknightnate]

Mike Cole makes great content!

[u/LeadershipWilling684]

Dont need no doc