How John Mayer Does What He Loves

John Mayer is easily one of the best guitarist of this era. He resembles the playing style of Eric Clapton and is indeed just as good.

For the most part, however, this incredible talent is not commonly known. He is revered as just another pop singer who writes love songs. This is not unfounded as that is exactly what he was. John Mayer began his professional music career as your run of the mill, musician poster boy. He got the chicks to follow him like some kind of teen sensation and gained instant fame with his first hit single, No Such Thing.

From then on, it was smooth sailing for this guitar master. He had gained enough popularity and stardom that he was able to begin performing the music that he really loves.

John Mayer had a goal in mind, and instead of taking a direct route, he saw it fit to get to where he wanted by giving in to what was "popular" during that time. He understood that he was good enough to gain some fame, but that he wouldn't be able to do it right away by playing what he really loves to play.

That is why, as we will see, John Mayer's music went from main stream pop to a level of legendary musicianship.

Have a look at the music video, No Such Thing. You will see here the very poppy style that launched his career. It came off the album Room For Squares and was accompanied by other later released singles including, Your Body Is A Wonderland, and Why Georgia.

All of these songs are a tad sappy and have a very pop style to them. To the average teenie-bopper, these songs were the cream of the crop, however to people who enjoy music for better than average skills and talent, he was just another guy.

Little did we know, that John Mayer was just riding the wave, setting himself up for his future career.

John Mayer recorded a second album which turned out to be less successful than the first. However, it did contain Mayer's first number one single, Daughters.

The video shows that this too was a sappy, hollow emotion song. It does not show any significant talent, other than the ability to write lyrics that are catchy enough to grab people's attention. In my eyes, that isn't enough to be considered a "real" musician. The only person I would say has ever gained legendary status with just his words, is Bob Dylan.

The entire album, Heavier Things, is filled with nonsense tracks that are good enough to satisfy pop culture's needs. Magazines and awards shows praised Mayer for his thoughtful creativity and his acoustic prowess, but to him, these things were mere stepping stones.

And they were the last stepping stones he needed. John Mayer was about to open up his can of worms and take his music to a new level. A level that has earned him widespread respect from legendary musicians.

It wasn't long after finding such great success from his first two albums that John Mayer decided to show off what he could do. He formed the John Mayer Trio, and released the album Try!.

As you can see here in this video, he has lost the soft acoustic sound, and bombards the crowd with his jazzy electric. Mayer began to really feel his music. It was the first time in his professional career that he was able to play music with feeling rather than just going through the motions.

Although there are a couple of songs on the album that revert back to the poppy sound of his first two records, the majority of the tracks are a perfect segway into the present. Because, as this video shows, John Mayer was still very structured and not as free as he would have liked to be.

It was the smooth guitar skills that grabbed the attention of other renowned musicians, and it allowed him to break loose from any remaining chains and do this...

Being able to pull off a performance like this with B.B. King is no small feat. They played the blues so smooth with each other, each showing off their amazing musical talent.

John Mayer has performed with other legends such as Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton, which solidifies his place in music history. Down the road, when we look back at the generations of accomplished musicians, John Mayer will be considered one of the finest.

He was able to crash the pop music scene just to break through the barrier to enable himself to play music the way it was meant to be played. It is because of this that John Mayer is doing what he loves...

Playing real music that will surely make him go down as one of the finest guitarists in history.