The Blue Nile

Hi, my name is John, and I'm a Blue Nile fan. If you've listened long enough, you know I love The Blue Nile. And I love that other artists and people I come in contact with in the world who are younger are starting to really discover The Blue Nile. And one of the songs that you can get any young person to love—which is the test of a great song, is like, it doesn’t matter when it came out, do you love it?—is "The Downtown Lights" by The Blue Nile. And it makes me want to write more songs like that, and then I try to, and I go, I don’t have what this guy has. But I’m still going to try, I’m still going to try to write a song like this.

You know I love Blue Nile if you listen to LIFE With John Mayer long enough. This is "Tinseltown in the Rain." For our muso friends, this record [1984's "A Walk Across the Rooftops"] was actually a sort of prototypical test of the Linn drum. So most of the drums on this record are Roger Linn's Linn drum, which would go on to be just absolutely fundamental in the creation of '80s music. Prince is famous for just being an artiste with a Linn drum. The record is so clean, it is like a sushi meal when it comes to the cleanness of the tracks, and the use of negative space. It's just gorgeous. I can't recommend The Blue Nile enough.

This is a song that I have always loved, and I love turning people on to this band, The Blue Nile. This is "The Downtown Lights," and everyone I meet who hasn't heard The Blue Nile will eventually have heard The Blue Nile. Because I am a staunch advocate for this band.