Born and Raised

Q: What song that you've written speaks most to your heart when you sing it?

John Mayer: "Born and Raised." When I sing "Born and Raised" I'm having the best time. I've waited to sing that song live for quite a while now. And there's always somebody in the crowd—more than one person but I key into one person every night, one or two people—and there's a certain person who's had the same life experience that I may have. And we are just on a thing. And there's this closed-eyed, "but they do not have each other."

And I know how they feel because when you do the Springsteen thing in the crowd [waves one hand above his head] it's for real. So I really enjoy playing that song and knowing that if you can relate to that song you can really relate to that song.

In October of 2010, I went into Electric Lady Studios in New York City for what would end up being a record called Born and Raised. And I remember being in Studio C up on the third floor, and I had a harmonica. And something about this cadence of playing the harmonica that I had sounded to me like the words: "born and raised."

And I was just in some mode where, I couldn't not write every day. And a song like this really began as the sort of DNA contributor to the entire album. There's always a song you write that stands up as the captain of the rest of the songs that you will write for an album. And the rest of Born and Raised was driven by the DNA of this song. And... glad that I went straight into the studio to work out whatever I had in my head and my heart.