“”Who Says” is my stand up to the inner bullies in people.”John Mayer (219)

“A lot of the songs are objections to reality, the objections to the reality created by what other people think or what other people have to say. Being in a suburban, north-eastern town like Fairfield, CT, not really the most conducive place for being a songwriter so “No Such Thing” comes out the “why not, “who says I can’t.” What’s interesting is that fame and success didn’t really satisfy that and just sends me back further into the feeling that I am being misunderstood.”John Mayer (219)

“I loved a girl a lot but she couldn’t trust men and if you trace it back as to why, the first man in her life she couldn’t trust. This song “Daughters” really is a result of having traced it back trying to figure out how I could love this person and the answer is you can’t because someone else didn’t before you. I’m really singing to a girl, I’m singing fathers be good to your daughters because I can’t love this girl.”John Mayer (219)

“It was really about my first girlfriend I had when I was 14 years old, compared to nothing, that first relationship compared to nothing is all great. It’s not better or worse than anything. It’s really a song about when you love someone enough you could basically just jump into bed at 4 and get out of bed when it’s dark, it’s like to go see a movie and when you walk out in the parking lot it’s dark, same thing except instead of the movie it’s sex.”John Mayer (219)

“Not long ago I ran into my ex it was very amicable and I had this beautiful moment where I said, “A lot of it’s me. A lot of it’s in my head, like something happened to me, and it’s just the way I work, it’s the way my mind is and I took it really hard.” That took a long time to be able to admit, and where the song comes in is that I was really really sad, like the kind of sad everyone’s there once in their lives, just once hopefully. I was sad about everything and this song idea came to mind, ‘Never On The Day You Leave’. I don’t know where it came from but I just thought all at once it came out the whole full cloth. Never on the day you leave. The song was written in 20 minutes. There’s a line in there that is so brutal because it’s so true, and I can’t play the song live because I don’t think I’d make it through it. I haven’t played the song live. I don’t think I can. There are times you don’t want  to think about the song. “She’ll fight for you like hell then force herself to like some other man.” That’s what women do. They show up a hundred percent. There is a time they are there a hundred percent with everything and then at some point for whatever reason not making a judgment you or someone else says, “Nah.” And what they force themselves to do to get over you is so transformative for good and bad that you will never see that whole person again. There is a time that they will be fighting for you with everything they have but when you say, in that moment  – and maybe it’s right that you do, maybe the end joke of ‘Never On The Day You Leave’ is that it’s all bad thinking – you shouldn’t be together. But that’s not what it’s about in that moment of that song. That song is about a moment where you’re investigating why you’re so lonely and why you don’t have this thing. Maybe it’s revisionist’s history and you’re completely wrong, but songs aren’t supposed to be philosophically correct, they just have to be true to your feelings. Every time I sang that line I would cry – in the middle of that line. It took me days and days and days to be able to sing that line for the record [in the studio – Ed] and get through it without crying. I’ve listened back to it, “She’ll fight for you like hell then force herself to like some other man.” That’s what people do. When you finally say, “I don’t want to.” There is a day they stop calling and that’s when guys go, “Oh My God!””John Mayer (1107)