Mayer is a wonderland

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, July 8, 2004

John Mayer had a novel way to confront the challenge of following up his three-million-selling major label debut, “Room for Squares.”

“The name of the game for me is what is the ideal way to fail. It’s not really what is the ideal way to become successful,” Mayer said. “It’s what way is the most ideal way to fail. Because if it does fail, you’ll want to know that it was the exact way it should have failed. That means making the kind of record that feels exactly the right temperature to you. …”

To that end, Mayer, who is touring this summer with Maroon 5, retreated to an apartment in New York City to write for his new CD, “Heavier Things,” and set a basic goal for himself: He simply wanted the songs to feel good when he played them.

“The reason that that was my criteria, to feel good to play, was because that’s about as specific as you could get in trying to predict what a record’s going to be,” Mayer, 25, said. “I knew that as long it was fun to play it wouldn’t matter.”

As on “Room for Squares,” Mayer comes off as a humble, work-a-day guy who deals with normal problems such as loneliness (“Something’s Missing”), who longs for a simple life and the comforts of home (“Home Life”) and will be absolutely devoted to that one special woman (“Only Heart”).

Musically, “Heavier Things,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart with first-week sales of 315,000, continues to feature the easy-going, slightly earthy pop sound of his earlier music.

Several of the strong songs (“Something’s Missing,” “Come Back to Bed” and “Split Screen Sadness”) display Mayer’s ability to write melancholy ballads. But two of the CD’s friskiest tunes are also among his strongest efforts.

The recent hit single “Bigger Than My Body” takes wing behind the song’s irresistibly catchy chorus, while “Only Heart” has a near-perfect pure pop melody.

The biggest musical difference, in fact, is that most of the new songs find Mayer favoring electric guitar over the acoustic guitar frequently featured on “Room for Squares.” But even this shift is fairly subtle.

The Connecticut-born Mayer began his pursuit of music in 1997, when he enrolled in the prestigious Berklee College of Music. He stayed only a year before moving to Atlanta, where he began writing and playing solo acoustic shows.

By 1999, he had released his first CD, “Inside Wants Out,” which mixed solo acoustic performances of his early songs with a few tunes that were recorded with a full band.

That CD gained strong reviews, and in 2000, his showcase at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, led to a record deal.

Next came “Room for Squares.”

By early 2002, Mayer was selling out clubs. Then radio began to catch on, and “Room for Squares” began an 80-week run on the Billboard chart fueled by the hit singles “Your Body is a Wonderland” (which won a Grammy for best pop vocal performance), “Why Georgia” and “No Such Thing.”

The success of the CD also prompted Columbia’s re-release of “Inside Wants Out” in 2002 and the release of a live CD and DVD, “Any Given Thursday,” last year.

Mayer hinted that his live show will present some changes from the show represented on “Any Given Thursday” and even the sets he played as recently as last summer when he toured with Counting Crows.

“There’s a certain feeling right now that this is the moment to make a change. I have to keep it fresh for myself,” he said.

John Mayer performs Sunday at the White River Amphitheatre.

John Mayer

7 p.m. Sunday, White River Amphitheatre in Auburn; $33.75-$45.

John Mayer

7 p.m. Sunday, White River Amphitheatre in Auburn; $33.75-$45.