Village Voice
Pazz and Jop
January 19, 2010
Link
"There should never be guilt in pleasure," John Mayer wrote this year to his nearly 2.8 million Twitter followers, in reference to a Miley Cyrus song. The 32-year-old singer, songwriter, and bluesy guitarist has also taken aim at jaded souls who acknowledge liking a popular song by saying they "actually" like it—the implication being, I guess, that you wouldn't have expected such a tasteful person to like that song, and thus that it's still, on some level, a guilty pleasure. To me, "Who Says"—the first single from Mayer's fourth major-label studio album, Battle Studies, which entered the charts at #1 to mixed reviews (or, among the circle of critics I'm friends with, no reviews at all)—isn't "just" a song about getting high. It's the anti-guilty pleasure. And yes, I "actually" like it.
Marc Hogan
Des Moines, IA
