John Mayer has a new video out for his single, “New Light,” and the tk-year-old singer/songwriter is definitely tackling the music video production process from a whole new perspective.
Sometimes less is more, and as Mayer reveals in his Facebook post promoting the “New Light” video, he couldn’t get anyone to agree on a budget for his music video at the label, so he decided to use “a place downtown that usually does birthday and Bar Mitzvah videos.”
The result? Awkwardly hilarious, and a bit vulnerable, surprisingly.
Mayer dons an old sweatshirt and pajama pants with running sneakers — looking like he literally just rolled out of bed to do this. He announces to the camera in front of a green screen: “I’m John Mayer and I’m ready to be a star!”
He then sings to the camera in front of various scenes on the green screen that include everything from a farmhouse, to Mayer’s face (times three) in the clouds, to a receptionist that’s in a room full of empty cubicles, to the interstate — the list goes on.
(You know when you sing at karaoke and sometimes they have random visuals behind you? It’s kind of like that.)
Despite being low budget, the video has definitely got a lot of attention already.
Is there a deeper meaning behind all of this? The title of the video on YouTube isn’t just the song title, it’s “New Light (Premium Content!).” Is Mayer making a statement about how it’s so hard to rise above the noise these day? That we’re going through content overload? Who knows.
You can watch the video yourself below. What do you think?
