Last week, John Mayer teased a mysterious new project with the phrase “Sob Rock.” Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that Sob Rock is the name of John’s new album, and it’ll arrive July 16.
Ahead of the album, we’ll get the first single, “Last Train Home,” on June 4. This is the song John teased on TikTok back in March.
John tells the Wall Street Journal that Sob Rock is a record “made to bring comfort,” after the terrible year we’ve all lived through. The Wall Street Journal describes the album as having a “1980s soft-rock vibe,” which John explains this way: “I asked myself, ‘What music makes me feel like everything’s going to be OK?’ And it’s the music I listened to growing up in the ’80s. There’s a security-blanket aspect about that sound that reminds me of a safer time.”
But legendary producer Don Was, who worked on the new album, notes, “The songwriting on the record is decidedly modern — there’s no throwback sensibility.”
As he prepares for the album release and other projects, including a tour with Dead & Company, John says he’s put his controversial image as a serial-dating, problematic soundbite-giving jerk behind him for good. “I do think that at a certain point you are allowed to take all your loose ends, put them in a box and lock them up and say, ‘We never have to talk about that again,"” he states.
“It’s quieter in my head than you might think,” John says of the place he’s in now. “I don’t apply too much context to things other than, if it feels good and it feels honest and I won’t regret it — and I’m pretty good at sensing those things now — then I’ll do it.”
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