While I have mixed feelings about the Grammys in general, I almost always read through the winner's list to find bands or albums that I may have missed out on. A few of the categories I pay special attention to are Best Engineered Album - Non-Classical, Producer of the Year, and Best Surround Album. This year, Porcupine Tree's The Incident was nominated for Best Surround Album but lost to Britten's Orchestra. Wah?! How'd that happen? Anyway, the Best Engineered Album went to John Mayer's Battle Studies. I'm not sure what the criteria is when it comes to best engineered album. (A quick search for this came up short, other than a Wikipedia list of all the previous winners.) I assume the award is given to the album with the best sound recording, but what about the mixing and mastering? Do those stages factor into the decision? Considering this category is for any non-classical, there must be hundreds (or thousands?) of albums that could be considered. Whatever the criteria, I figure the album that wins must sound pretty good on headphones!
Being a casual fan of John Mayer, I got the Battle Studies album soon after it came out on November 17, 2009. It didn't strike me as an unbelievable audio delight, but it has a lot of smooth, well crafted pop songs. It seems to me that John Mayer is the kind of musician who is easily dismissed as a phony or a hack. I don't get that. I have three of his studio albums and a live album, and I think his songs are memorable and meaningful. For someone who doesn't pay much attention to lyrics, I occasionally find myself contemplating his words while listening. In the song Stop This Train, from his album Continuum, Mayer says "So scared of getting older, I'm only good at being young." Quoting his dad, Mayer sings "Don't for a minute change the place you're in. Don't think I couldn't ever understand. I tried my hand...John, honestly we'll never stop this train." Something about this always gets me thinking.
Maybe the reason people get down on John Mayer is because he comes across as a playboy. I suppose I pay less attention to the tabloids than I do to the music. I found a quote online about Mayer that takes a real shot at him, but who knows, maybe its accurate: "John Mayer's life is performance art. And for years now it has been the performance of an incredibly insecure and simultaneously incredibly arrogant guy. Funny, mean, and obliviously defensive. John Mayer's whole interview schtick is a sustained act of attempted mansplaining. He just cannot say anything nice without backstabbing somebody in the process." While I'd prefer the musicians I follow to be decent people, I can't say this one impression of Mayer is going to halt me from listening to his music.
I thought I might find some interesting back story about how John Mayer rose to his current level of musicianship and fame. As explained on Wikipedia, Mayer was "born and raised in Connecticut, he attended Berklee College of Music in Boston before moving to Atlanta, Georgia in 1997, where he refined his skills and gained a following." His story is worth a read but didn't provide me the insight I was hoping to find. Ok, back to Battle Studies. I've been listening to it on headphones and I can't say it's blowing me away. It is a solid album, though. My favorite song is Track 2 - All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye. Track 3 - Half Of My Heart features Taylor Swift, another of Mayer's girlfriends. See the girlfriend list here.
My Rating__6 out of 10 Headphones__ 5 out of 10
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