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Home Life

Live in East Lansing, MI 2004
Speech during performance of "Home Life"

This is a song that I made the track for first. That's not how I usually write songs. And there was something about it that seemed really eerie, and plasticky, and it felt like an Ikea catalog, and it was like nothing I'd ever done before. And it reminded me, for some reason I just started singing on it, "I think I wanna go home," is what I was singing on it.

And before I knew it, I was walking around the studio with a microphone in my hand and -- it's very unlike me to do these moves, because I usually have a guitar in my hand. But I was doing, like, you know like this thing? Like I'm a smart rapper? This thing? [Mimes rapping] Look at my head. Look at my head as I rap. I rap with my two fingers, from my head to you. And I'm walking around the studio: [sings] "I refuse to believe!" So when you hear that record, that's me walking around the studio like [mimes rapping]. It makes a nice little solo number.

Interview with Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered
'It's Hard To Stay Patient': A Conversation With John Mayer

AS: I get a sense on this album of a sort of nostalgia for that kind of domestic, family, tranquil life.

JM: That's been the theme of my entire career, really.

AS: Yeah?

JM: Basically, I don't know how to reconcile this job I have as a musician with this desire to be a guy who stays at home. I even tattooed it on my arms—"Home Life"—as some sort of like, "thug life" alternative tattoo.