Liberation through admission
I’m sitting in a quiet room in Uris Library, where even the slightest drop of a pen would interrupt the stillness of this room by echoing throughout the space. The moving outro of John Mayer’s In Your Atmosphere - Live lingers in my head as I remove my earbuds and wonder what the studio recording of this song sounds like. Upon searching Spotify and YouTube, I realized that Mayer has never released a studio recording of this song, rather, the only recording of it is from his first performance of it live at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. However, my YouTube search leads me to a video of this very performance, unlocking the visual accompaniment to the song I have listened to a thousand times over in my head. I know every word to this song and want to belt every long note in this moment — but I can’t — because although I am surrounded by people, none of them are experiencing the music that I am, and none of them are reacting to it emotionally, physically, or mentally.
Watching this performance alone, through my earbuds, in a private setting made it feel like a very intimate listening experience, as if Mayer was speaking directly to me. In the video, I can hear the audience in the background applauding and cheering, but I can only see Mayer, isolated by the spotlight’s illumination center stage, with only a stool, a microphone, and a guitar. This stage setup creates an environment of solitude, which is reinforced by how the audience could not sing along, as Mayer had never recorded the song or performed it before this night. However, as someone who has already heard the recording of this song, I was able to sing along in my head, which made me feel very connected to Mayer, as if I was the only person he had shared this song with, until this moment. This viewing experience of knowing the song (while the audience in the video did not) coupled with how I was the only person who was listening to the song in a room with many other people reinforced the feeling of privacy and closeness with Mayer. It almost felt as if I was a friend of Mayer’s who personally knew the story and person he is talking about in the song, whereas the crowd of people listening don’t know. However, this feeling of personal connection is quite ironic, as in reality, I was the one with a less intimate viewing experience, as the video I watched has 10 million views, while there were only a few thousand people who got to watch this performance live and in person. This feigned feeling of closeness with the artist and the story he was telling was spurred by how I felt familiar with the song due to the phenomena of repetition — repeated lines throughout the song, and repeated listens to this very performance. As Tom Service notes in “Stuck on Repeat: Why We Love Repetition in Music,” repeated lines in a song (as well as repeated listens) “carve out a familiar, rewarding path in our minds, allowing us at once to anticipate and participate in each phrase as we listen” in turn spurring “a transcendent connection that lasts at least as long as a favourite song” between everyone who knows the words to the song (Service). Repetition in songs breeds familiarity, as it energizes listeners to know the notes before they are played and know what the words are before they are spoken. This sense of familiarity with a song, regardless of whether or not one can relate to the story told through the lyrics, generates an atmosphere of intimacy and strong connection between the artist and the listeners (as well as among listeners) because it feels the same as hearing a story that you’ve already memorized the details of after hearing a friend tell this story time and time again.
As Mayer sings the first few lines of this song, he never looks at the audience — instead closing his eyes, as if to replay a distinct memory in his mind. Upon hearing the first line, my emotions are dominated by curiosity, as Mayer disappointedly sings “I don’t think I want to go to LA anymore,” two times over, and I ponder why he no longer wants to go to LA. Mayer’s repetition of “I don’t think I want to go to LA anymore” while he withholds the explanation of why he doesn’t want to go to LA, along with his use of the word “think” makes it feel as if he is hesitating to share the story he wants to tell in this song. As soon as he says the following line — “I don’t know what it’s like to land and not race to your door”— Mayer commits to being vulnerable in this song, revealing that he doesn’t want to go to LA because LA reminds him of a relationship he misses, and he feels lost without this person. Mayer’s use of “you,” instead of “she/he/them” instantly engages the listener by bringing them into this story — pushing them to associate with one side of the narrative: the singer (someone feeling lost after the end of a relationship), or the receiver (someone who has moved on and continued living their life in spite of ending a meaningful relationship). As the song moves into the chorus, Mayer sings several longer notes when singing “steer clear” and “atmosphere,” which heightens the sense of longing for someone specific that is expressed throughout the song. Here, the lengthier notes suggest “longing” because they are reminiscent of calling out for someone by raising your voice, as if singing louder and for a longer period of time will increase the chances that the person he is trying to call out to will hear him.
Mayer invokes repetition throughout this song by repeating certain lines, such as “I don’t think I want to go to LA anymore” and “I’m gonna steer clear, or burn up in your atmosphere.” Here, repetition engenders a sense of comfort for the listeners, as they become familiar with these lines and emotions because they are exposed to them over and over again. Mayer emphasizes this notion of comfort by repeating the same sequence of notes on the guitar before and during the verses to foster a sense of nostalgia for listeners every time they hear those notes again. This comfort that listeners develop by becoming familiar with lines and sounds that are repeated mirrors how Mayer is remaining in his comfort zone throughout much of this song by not directly telling the person who he is talking about that he still thinks about them, knowing that the details of this person’s identity are vague in the song (limited to knowing that they live in LA), and the chances of them hearing this song if it’s not released as a studio recording are low. Mayer basks in this comfort in the verses and chorus of this song, invoking the comfort that people feel while driving around familiar roads with visual references to driving in the lyrics: “I get lost on the boulevard at night,” “the sunset says ‘we see this all the time,’” and “the ten and the two is the loneliest sight.” That is, until the outro interrupts the wandering nature and comfort that is exuded by the verses.
The most emotional part of this song is the outro, in which Mayer changes the key of the song to a higher, more optimistic pitch as he launches into the final words he’s leaving for the person he’s calling out to: “wherever I go, whatever I do, I wonder where I am in my relationship to you… and watch that pretty life play out in pictures from afar.” Here, Mayer interrupts the sense of comfort that he created earlier in the song, as he ventures into unfamiliar territory by foregoing the established tune of the song (up until this point) as well as the emotional qualities exuded by the lyrics. In the chorus and verses of the song, Mayer has his defenses up a bit more: he notes that he wants to avoid LA because it makes him nostalgic about a relationship he misses and that he feels lost without this person in his life. In doing so, he suggests that this sadness and longing only enters his headspace when he’s in LA — that is, only in sparse situations in which he is reminded of this person because he is in their “atmosphere.” In the outro, Mayer interrupts the sense of comfort he created in his solution of merely avoiding LA to avoid his sadness by facing the reality of his emotions: he admits that he feels as if he will always be longing for this individual — regardless of whether or not he is physically in LA. He notes that he will always care about seeing what they are up to as he’ll “watch that pretty life play out in pictures from afar,” because he still cares about this person, and will always be curious as to what they are up to. As he sings these final notes, Mayer shakes his head from side to side, as if to say “no”— perhaps as a physical manifestation of how he doesn’t want to feel this pain anymore, but he feels helpless against stopping it. When watching this movement, I was struck by how I desperately wanted to sing out the last few notes with him and sway to further elongate each note. And as the performance ends, I find myself sitting up straighter in my chair, wondering why I, as well as millions of other fans of this song around the world, are so moved by a song that reminds us of the longing we’ve felt upon the end of a meaningful relationship. Perhaps it’s because we are relieved that we are not the only ones experiencing these emotions, or perhaps it’s because we are more content with living with these emotions now, because admitting to feeling them in itself is liberating.
