Psychedelic Lunch

Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch”series where wefind out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music and musicians from the 60’s to today. Enjoy the trip!

The lead single from The Search for Everything: Wave Two, “Still Feel Like Your Man” is similar in several ways to “Moving On and Getting Over” from Wave One. Both are groovy, funky tunes with lyrics about getting over an ex, though in this instance Mayer admits to still having feelings for her.

The song was premiered on April 7, 2015 by Mayer during a secret live show at the Hotel Café in Los Angeles.

Mayer told Rolling Stone that the name of the song came to him in a flash. He then proceeded to write wrote numerous pages of ideas. “The title itself had lyrics blowing out of it from every corner,” he said.Once he found the right music to go with the concept, Mayer wrote for three solid days. “I feel like I never touched the ground those three days,” he said, “like ‘Let’s not worry about what this might draw from and be true to whatever it is.'”Mayer added that he spent more hours revising and improving the song than any other he’s recorded. The final result, after a period of years in which he completely deconstructed and reconstructed the tune countless times, is a vibe that the singer described as “ancient Japanese R&B.”

Mayer’s favorite lyric – “I still keep your shampoo in the shower, in case you want to wash your hair” – is one of many autobiographical moments on The Search For Everything. On the day of Wave 2‘s release, Mayer tweeted: “I still keep your shampoo in my shower/in case you wanna wash your hair” in a ballad would be too sad for human consumption.”

Speaking with The New York Times, John Mayer confirmed that the ex who he is singing of during this song is Katy Perry, insisting it should be pretty obvious to fans. The two artists dated on and off from 2012 until early 2016, and Mayer admits he never fully got over the breakup, as their relationship had meant so much to him. “Who else would I be thinking about?” he asked. “And by the way, it’s a testament to the fact that I have not dated a lot of people in the last five, six years. That was my only relationship.”