Continuum by John Mayer
Continuum is the third studio album by American musician John Mayer, released September 9, 2006 on Columbia Records. Recording sessions for the album took place during November 2005 to September 2006 at The Village Recorder in Los Angeles, California, Avatar Studios and Right Track/Sound on Sound in New York City, and Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. Production was handled primarily by Mayer and Steve Jordan. It marked a change in Mayer's musical style, and incorporated musical elements of blues and soul more heavily than in his previous work with pop-rock. The album debuted at number 2 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, selling 300,186 copies in its first week. It also reached the top-ten in several other countries and sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Upon its release, Continuum received generally positive reviews from most music critics and earned Mayer several accolades, including a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 49th Grammy Awards. Rolling Stone magazine named it the eleventh best album of 2006.
After throwing fans of his campfire serenades off guard with the jam-heavy live album <i>Try!</i>, <i>Continuum</i> confirms John Mayer’s transformation into a 21st-century soul man with serious blues-rock chops. And for Mayer, that shift means more than just casting his songs in a gospel glow, but also speaking to political unrest atop the laidback shuffle of “Waiting on the World to Change”. Ultimately, the growth Mayer exhibits here can be gauged not just by his shred-tastic cover of Hendrix’s “Bold as Love”, but by the fact he answers it with “Dreaming with a Broken Heart”, a lighter-waving anthem to call his own.
