album #1

room for squares (john mayer)

This album is somewhat beyond review; I've grown up with it and always loved it. It's a highly melodic album, contemplative, nostalgic. This record basically exists for high school- even the tracks I don't love, like "Your Body Is A Wonderland," are pretty high school- the level of unabashed, cheesy romance that one must feel within themself to sing those lyrics, which personally I find hard to recapture with age. Every track is basically either a meditation on nostalgia or the story of a girl. Songs like "Neon" and "City Love" are like a coin flip, two girls in the city, one dark and sultry, troubled, and the other a dopey swoon of love. "Back To You" kinda hits both nostalgia and love- the sense of a lost love that can't be shaken (and in this sense it's another coin flip, since "Love Song For No One" is an unshakeable future love.) As a nostalgic person and a lover of melody, and having been introduced to this music at the right time (age sixteen, Cornell summer camp), I've always really liked this album. "3x5" is an old favorite- a message about living instead of capturing and collecting (whoops!), with a beautiful curve to the melody. "No Such Thing," the original breakthrough, entirely glows- the whimsical, dreamy number of a young man taking over his high school- this definitely sang right to me. It's weird that John Mayer (the person) has collected such a weird and vaguely negative reputation in the years since, because this album always struck me as pretty sincere, sweet, playful, and pretty.

I don't go to this album too much these days- largely thanks to a college evolution that left me just a little bit more pretentious or deliberately hip with the music I pursue- but it remains warm and beautiful, like the Cornell lawn on a summer afternoon.