John Mayer has shared the official music video for “Wild Blue”, one of the easy-going singles off his latest album, Sob Rock, which recently debuted in the top spot on Billboard‘s Top Album Sales Chart.
The new clip marks the third from the ranks of Sob Rock following previously released videos for “Last Train Home” and “Shot In The Dark“.
The “Wild Blue” video was directed by Mathew Miguel Cullen, who co-founded Mirada Studios alongside Guillermo del Toro. The visuals for the dreamy, bobbing track align neatly with the album’s retro ’80s aesthetic, with pink-and-blue-hued green screen backgrounds and playful, low-fi animations drifting across the frame. Mayer, whose outfit is part-Don Johnson in Miami Vice, part-David Byrne in Stop Making Sense—gleefully leans into the cheesy surreality of it all, playing the part with an endearing lack of irony.
John Mayer Discusses The Unabashedly Un-Cool Creative Concept Behind ‘Sob Rock’ [Watch/Listen]
Not one to do anything halfway, Mayer went above and beyond in crafting a stylistic and thematic aesthetic on Sob Rock, from the sound and feel of the material to the gleefully self-effacing, actively outdated marketing campaign he waged for months in the run-up to the release—both in real life and on TikTok.
The album itself was an exercise capturing a bygone mood, Mayer explained in an interview with Apple Music‘s Zane Lowe when the album was released: “The idea of Sob Rock is that it might have been something that already happened, but when you go looking, it’s not. The idea of Sob Rock is to implant false memories into your brain. That’s what it did for me. … It’s out of my brain and it’s out of everyone’s shared Mandela effect. Can you have memories that never happened to you? Can you go back and synthesize a piece of work that’s so true to the era that when you hear it your brain goes ‘no, no, no, this exists?’”
Check out the retro video for “Wild Blue” by John Mayer below and listen to Sob Rock here.
John Mayer – “Wild Blue” (Official Video)
[Video: John Mayer]
John Mayer will head out on tour in 2022 in support of Sob Rock. Check out a full list of dates below and head here for ticketing details.
In the meantime, Mayer just hit the road with Grateful Dead offshoot Dead & Company for a lengthy run of summer and fall 2021 tour dates. Read a full rundown of Monday night’s Dead & Company tour opener in Raleigh here.