John Mayer’s lat­est album, “Battle Studies”, rep­re­sents a darker and less musi­cally trendy style than lis­ten­ers may be used to.

Yesterday’s debut of the album came after a series of teasers, snip­pets and sam­ples were released through rhap​sody​.com, iTunes and a music video for the first sin­gle off the album, the con­tro­ver­sial “Who Says”… con­tro­ver­sial because one of the lines alludes to Mayer’s pref­er­ence to do what he wants with his life, includ­ing get­ting stoned. Though Mayer’s peo­ple have said that the lyric is more open to inter­pre­ta­tion and a cen­sored ver­sion has been released for main­stream radio audi­ences of a more G-rated level, fans are squirm­ing to defend and rebuke him for the sin­gle line, rather than just chill out and enjoy the music.

His fourth stu­dio album released by Columbia records shows the artist as a frac­tured and com­pli­cated guy. Interviews lead­ing up to the release have por­trayed him as the oppo­site. Mayer is volatilely witty and has about as much despair as a golden retriever with a ten­nis ball, which makes me ques­tion the valid­ity of his words.

But while the tone is strik­ingly less palat­able for a main­stream audi­ence, the lyrics and style are decid­edly romance-based. Other songs on the album are named “Perfectly Lonely”, “Friends Lovers or Nothing”, and “Half of my Heart”, which is barely a duet with coun­try music star Taylor Swift. That’s fine that she barely sings in this song. I’m more inclined to appre­ci­ate her tal­ent from a more visual and less audi­tory perspective.

What’s he so lonely about? Someone needs to remind him that he is John Mayer, rock star and sex sym­bol to 18–24 year old women and the occa­sional cougar. It’s appar­ent that the slightly older-than-you-might-think Mayer, age 32, has found his niche with a gen­er­a­tion of lis­ten­ers who want men to talk about their feel­ings and don scarves in a more European fash­ion. Clever and sappy but appre­cia­ble lines like “any­thing other than yes is no. Anything other than stay is go. Anything less than I love you is lying,” from the 11^th track on the CD will be dot­ting face­book sta­tuses and tweets of smit­ten twenty-somethings in the weeks to come.

Overall, the album is great. The change is wel­come, but likely to be dis­liked by those who thought Jack Johnson’s “Sleep Through Static” was an offen­sive shift from any­thing that didn’t belong on the Curious George soundtrack.

This work by Mayer doesn’t rep­re­sent the gui­tar com­plex­ity that his per­for­mances on “Where the Light Is” with the John Mayer Trio does, but the total pack­age from abil­ity to lis­ten and love it or casu­ally ignore it as back­ground noise and still think it’s pretty good.