John Mayer Quotes (1977-)

“Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego's defenses and into the open mind.”

“Belief is a beautiful armor, but makes for the heaviest sword; like punching underwater, you never can hit who you're trying for.”

“To be on it is to be recognized, is to make it, especially in a world where every week, something that used to mean "making it" kinda goes extinct.”

“Without the iPod, the digital music age would have been defined by files and folders instead of songs and albums. Though the medium of music has changed, the iPod experience has kept the spirit of what it means to be a music lover alive.”

“Anyone privy to the release of the iPhone is going to hold on to their current device as long as they possibly can, all but Scotch taping their devices together so that they can crawl over the finish line and into the loving arms of a shiny new iPhone. (Oh, you know the box is gonna be sexy.)”

“L.A. reminds me of that friend who just breaks into your house without knocking and eats all your food. You can't stop complaining about him when he's there, but when he leaves, you just wish he'd come by and bug you. L.A.'s got a heightened sense of color and joy, so much so that it becomes annoying. It makes me emotionally itchy.”

“I love the American Apparel long-sleeve waffle shirt. You can't do it too much. If you wear a long-sleeve black T-shirt every single day, nobody's going to say, "That guy wears a long-sleeve black T-shirt too much." If you're wearing a sweatshirt that says "Gap Est. 1969" on it, you've got a couple days of wearing that before someone goes, "Why don't you do some laundry?"”

“The very real and present risk associated with being pursued as a celebrity pales in comparison to the daily, imminent danger to the public at large...The person being followed knows there is wanton carelessness behind them. The pedestrian crossing the street, or the car expecting to have the right of way does not. A severe accident occurring from this kind of vehicular pursuit is not a theoretical possibility, but a situational certainty.”

“The one thing I fear for [West] the most is if you keep talking about being the greatest, people eventually are going to want to watch you fail. Those who crash and burn are far more interesting to watch than those who actually succeed.”

“Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has found his niche in making the sound of solitude a triumphant experience, like Good Will Hunting: The Musical.”

“He's utterly melodic and hopelessly romantic, and when he performs live, he robs the air from your lungs. Oh, and he's devoid of any charisma or star power whatsoever.”

“I would love to be Jack White — or maybe I want the peo­ple who like Jack White to also like me. But I”m the guy who writes beau­ti­ful music at 85 beat per minute.”

“"Like being in the mother brain of soul music. This is absolute artistic fusion from top to bottom, and I don't think there's anyone else in the world that I could do that with right now."”

“In complete shock. I really want to use words right now but I can’t get em. Fuck. We’re supposed to lose our friends to time, at an age when we’re ready to agree to the terms of having lived a long life. Not now.”

“John wanted to take it in more of a pop direction than I did. It was like a marriage that we both knew would go bad once we started touring.”

“Neither punk nor prom king, Mayer was a tall kid from Connecticut, driving on the freeways, chasing slippery techno women, inhabiting a world of parents and slipcovers and holidays and gracious Southeastern metropolises; he was smart, inquisitive, articulate, a touch off in places.”

“John Mayer is a very talented brother and you don't know where your blessings are going to come from.”

“He words stuff with a real, I guess it's a witty, intelligent, very human [sensibility]. I would like to grab some of those qualities...I wish he was my friend.”

“One time I saw him perform live and he switched up his song at the end, like, [improvised] different chords — he remixed it...He's just not your typical guitar player. He's trying to push the envelope for the way guitarists and vocalists are heard. ... I just respect his musicality.”

“You know, the dude is a real musician. It's like anything you ever loved in Joe Jackson or anything you ever loved in any '70s rock. You're gonna get it out of this dude. He's a real student, and it comes through in his music.”

“What song do I hate? I think "Daughters," by John Mayer, would be a good candidate. I don't know why he bugs me so bad.”

“Before that it was Halo, and no one could beat him. That's pretty much his MO if he finds an interest in something -- it doesn't matter how incidental it is.”

“No musician is indifferent to the public's perception of him, but the exuberant, logorrheic Mayer takes self-awareness to new postmodern heights. Like a football player providing color commentary on his own career, he muses constantly on his own abilities and his place in the taxonomy of pop.”