“See that skin?/ It’s the same she’s been standing in/ Since the day/ She saw him walking away/ Now she’s left/ Cleaning up the mess he made.”

This isn’t even my favorite Mayer track. In fact, I’ve heard approximately fifteen better by him; songs that fill me with ‘skipping fourth period economics to go sit in a Brighton coffee bar flicking through glossy magazines and dreaming of the life I’ll lead’ sunshine memories. Songs that perfectly capture the youthful naivety of simple hope in love. Songs which are, at the very least, vaguely more interesting and memorable than this.

But infuriatingly, this one hypnotizes me. A sort of Philip Larkin for suburban America, (who obviously can’t quite take the brutal honesty of “They fuck you up/ Your mum and dad”) It alone deserves a post simply because I feel so blatantly manipulated, yet utterly sold on his wee homily. ‘Look’, John is telling me from under his artfully rumpled college-boy fringe, ‘I get your abandonment issues and deep-set fear of another man ruining you like that. Aren’t I an insightful modern metrosexual, all in touch with feminine behavioral determinants?’

And what kills me, is he is. So few lines, so irritatingly accurate. I mean, it’s trite! Straightforward, teeth-clenching, Hallmark catchphrase-worthy, clichéd self-help book material! There’s such a smug sympathy to it, as if merely stating that absent fathers tend to fuck up their daughters doesn’t even deserve a jaunty chord sequence. You’ve just identified how I’ll never be able to muster a decent relationship, my dear; the very least you could do is allow me a catchy few middle eight bars! I’m doomed to a life of intimacy problems, don’t I even deserve a proper pacy little number?

Sigh. But no, apparently as one of the damaged millions, all I get is this plodding guitar strum-a-thon. If my abandonment issues weren’t enough to send me into therapy, then the aftermath of this mind-numbingly dull verse arrangement may well be.

The part that really gets under my skin is the sheer eye-rolling inevitability of, “Girls become lovers/ Who turn into mothers…” Neatly summarize universal patriarchal attitudes to female identity solely in relation to our reproductive characteristics, why don’t you? Yes, I am a woman, and I exist solely to have sex and rear children. Glad we cleared that up, I was beginning to aim for a fully autonomous life of which a man was only an additional part. Imagine that!

Yet, bemusingly, John manages to eek out a corner of affection in my embittered heart. Maybe it’s because he’s provided a kind of understated anthem teenage girls can cradle close to their overflowing hearts (beside Jimmy Eat World’s ‘The Middle’) as they attempt to navigate the strange terrain of emotional scarring. Maybe it’s because sometimes its nice to have things spelt out in such simple terms, to look at and smile and nod and say “Ooo get me and my universally recognized issues.”

Or perhaps I’m just a sucker for his ruffled little cough syrup rock thing.