“Room For Squares,” my first major label release, turns 20 today. I’m not sure I have the kind of relationship with my own work whereby it’s important to put birthday hats on things, but this one feels like it’s worth sharing, if only to thank you for so many years of support and dedication to the music I’ve made. I wrote these songs when I was between 20-22 years old. The album features a song called “Your Body Is A Wonderland,” which in hindsight might make one cover their face with their paws, but there was such a sense of boundless enthusiasm at the time, coupled with a complete lack of knowing what to fear. Once you learn what to fear - once you start crafting criticism in the voices of others, you’ve already lost a layer of joy in the proceedings. I was sort of like Billy Madison coloring a duck blue because he hadn’t seen one. I hadn’t heard a song called “Your Body Is A Wonderland,” and that seemed a good enough reason to write it. You could say it’s become a punchline of sorts, as all novel-sounding songs avail themselves to, but I as I look back - only momentarily - I realize that whatever goofy innocence those tunes might trade in is exactly the spirit I’m chasing 20 years later, as I continue to look for the big, bold, heretofore-unsaid things. And it’s been so long, that to be honest, I forgot what to be scared of. So Happy 20th, Room For Squares, and thank you, both record and reader, for giving me a life of music.
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@travon: Amazing. How'd you come up with the title?
@johnmayer: @travon the great jazz saxophonist Hank Mobley had an album called “No Room For Squares,” where he’s looking so cool snd suave on the cover, and my take at the time was “I’m uncool and I know it and I’m proud of it.” And so “Room For Squares” was born. I mean, the CD has a periodic table of elements on it.