John Mayer

Illustration: Rob Kelly

To say John Mayer—the superpopular musician responsible for such cloying airwave cloggers as “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and “Daughters”—lacks edge would be an understatement. It’s a surprise, then, to discover that he’s actually funny, wry and painfully hyperaware. The 29-year-old guitarist even blogs, successfully, and performs stand-up (somewhat less successfully), when he isn’t busy appearing at sold-out arenas and playing cat and mouse with the press regarding his relationship with Jessica Simpson.

He recently took home two Grammys—one for Best Pop Vocal Album for his platinum-selling third release, Continuum, and one for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. We spoke to him by phone from his Minneapolis hotel room, hours before sound check.

I was told that you’ll be the most interesting and funny person I’ll ever interview. Then you were downgraded to top five.

I need to have a talk with whoever said that about expectations. Honestly, I don’t go into interview situations saying I’m going to be funny. I kind of let it do its own thing.

That’s so Zen. Did you have your heart set on winning in a certain Grammy category, or are you happy with how it shook out?

I only had my heart set on not getting shut out. Winning nothing and being nominated five times—it would have taken a lot of rationale to maneuver around that one in my mind.

I’m noticing that you don’t pretend you don’t care about it.

I think way more about my career than I probably need to. I aggressively try to mastermind the unmastermindable. I apply science to things where there is no science.

What do you mean?

I completely get off on reading about marketing stuff—not the business side of it, but the emotional side of it. I’ll have conversations for hours about album covers and how they matter. If Norah Jones’s Come Away with Me was not blue it would be an entirely different record, I’m sure of it. Continuum doesn’t have my face on the front, and it’s the best thing I could have done for the record.

Why?

I am not as cool a person as the music that I make.

Have you considered that you’re cooler than the music you make?

No. The record is the purest part of me—the part that if I just will allow myself to ease up on all the levers, I would be that way. I have a new saying: I fast-forward to 80 [years old] and turn around. When your hip’s shattered you have real shit to worry about, as opposed to looking back on when I was 29, sitting up in bed naked playing with my necklace, worrying about what you’re going to write.

Wait, you’re naked and wearing a necklace?

Yeah, I don’t take my necklace off to get naked.

I wasn’t suggesting they’re opposed. [Awkward pause] So, what about Jessica? According to Extra, you can’t deny you’re a couple anymore.

I don’t think I’ve ever denied it. When did I deny it? I’m having the best time of my life, so if the names don’t make sense to people, that’s so small to me.

Do you feel like your fans are wondering, What the hell?

Here’s the thing: Most artists at one point or another hit a point where they divorce themselves from their fans.

They get bloated.

The all-you-can-eat salad bar.

I meant metaphorically—artistically bloated.

That, too. It can be a lot of things: drugs, the wrong people, self-importance. I really do believe you can be a quote-unquote media figure and stay connected to your fans— that’s what’s great about having a blog—like, here’s me, here’s my sensibility unchanged, and if I’m saying I’m still me and then you see me with somebody in a picture more than once, you have to assume they’re a great person and that I haven’t—

Morphed into a douche bag?

Exactly. I’m the same douche bag I’ve always been.

John Mayer plays Madison Square Garden Wed 28.