Is John Mayer a dystopia?
You know how you listen and listen to a song and you don’t get it’s meaning until sometime when you’re really not paying attention and all the sudden the lyrics make sense?
This happened with me today with John Mayer’s song No Such Thing (2001). While the song has a very obvious upbeat tempo, I started to really listen to the lyrics and began to wonder, “Is Mayer being sarcastic with his lyrics and being satirical with his music?”
The line in his chorus “I just found out there’s no such thing as the real world, just a lie you’ve got to rise above” makes me think that Mayer is attempting to be satirical by the use of creating a dystopia. The whole song premises around the idea that in high school, everything looks “black and white” and you’re on the “so called right track.” His critique of “boys and girls” that “read all the books” tells how knowledge is not based in education.
I think this song is painfully honest, even though it’s highly satirical. The part where he admits that he thinks he’s got more to offer than he’s given seems to underline this. He admits this as he compares himself with the dreams of the upper class, signified in the song by the “prom kings” and the “drama queens.”
The ray of hope that this dystopia gives is that there is “something better on the other side.”
(Sometimes, I hate having an English degree. But sometimes I love it because I can use words like “dystopia” and “signify.”)