Album of the Day #139: CONTINUUM - John Mayer

Title: Continuum
Artist: John Mayer
Label: Columbia
Year: 2006
Songs: Waiting On The World To Change/I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)/Belief/Gravity/The Heart Of Life/Vultures*/Stop This Train/Slow Dancing In A Burning Room/Bold As Love**/Dreaming With A Brocken Heart/In Repair***/I’m Gonna Find Another You
Written by: John Mayer, except *John Mayer, Pino Palladino & Steve Jordan, **Jimi Hendrix and ***Charlie Hunter & John Mayer
Produced by: John Mayer & Steve Jordan
Thoughts: I don’t have to hear every record made this decade in order to say this, so here goes: Continuum is one of the best albums this decade and is going to be remembered as such in the future. It’s just freaking incredible. Everything that makes an album perfect, i.e.: all strong songs, a couple of great singles, a great flow and a wide variety of songs, are all here. If Try! was just a practice, Continuum proves that Mayer passed the test of being able to cater to fans, but at the same time expand his horizons, which makes him so great. “Waiting On The World To Change” is a typically structured Mayer song which has a major social theme. It’s a fantastic single and a great way to kick off the album, but where his first album felt like a set of songs trying to copy the success of the singles and where Heavier Things felt like a set of experiments, Continuum grows from the seeds that the single plants. It outstretches so that no song is a filler and it makes an album a true sum of its parts. You take away one track and the album completely changes tune. Even “Gravity” and “Vultures”, two JMT songs that debuted on Try!, are vitally important pieces of the record. (The two tracks even sound better in the studio than they did before.)
Overall, this is a fantastic record and one we’re going to have to remember for a long time. This John Mayer guy is in it for the long haul, folks. Let’s get ready for the next one.