John Mayer gets very little respect, and what little he does get is mostly accorded to his later, more sophisticated Rock albums, with his first two efforts in particular bearing the brunt of contemporary rock snobs’ scorn. And while I’ve caved to pressure in the past and said some negative things about those albums on my other site, I’ve never entirely understood this hatred. John Mayer is essentially a modern-day Easy Listening act, true, but Easy Listening is by no means automatically bad, and while acoustic folk-rock has acquired a not entirely undeserved reputation for musical laziness, Mayer isn’t guilty of that himself…say what you will, but he really knows how to play that guitar. Unlike most ultra-softcore sex jams (e.g. “Afternoon Delight”), “Your Body Is a Wonderland” works because it genuinely sounds tender and gentle rather than coy. This is a totally convincing soundtrack to a very gentle, slightly tentative lovemaking session between two inexperienced kids who are deeply in love with each other, and since that is a perfectly valid subject to write a song about and is clearly exactly what Mayer was going for, I have to conclude this song is a success.
Verdict: Good.