John Mayer – what a curious man. As a pop personality, he is funny, he’s a tabloid accessory to wear with his personality-mail: modeling Borat’s swimwear ones, play YouTube videos crackling, and general disarmament, with wit and self-condemned, making millions inclined to hate the star-tingling guitar virtuoso but millions more love him. It’s as if Mayer, burdened with his status as heir to Sting-Clapton-Knopfler tradition prima pop-rock classicism, pulled the mask: abalone Middlebrow.

There’s no doubt that the man’s got chops. Battle Studies is to study the actual skill and understanding of guitar-ninja house and musos are enthusiastic Mayer’s deconstruction of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” “Heartbreak Warfare,” says Mayer, U2-style guitar and strained metaphors of war: “Clouds of sulfur in the air / Bombs are falling everywhere.” The bust-up with Jennifer Aniston was bad, but it was really like firebombing Tokyo?

Battle Studies is terrible when Mayer drops seriousness, thought, and sending its reputation as a rake. “Half of my heart” with Taylor Swift, Mayer plays a guy who kiss with one eye open, scanning for his next victory. Then there’s folk-pop a “He said,” confession drug-smoking Rouet: “I don’t remember Looking lime / But the other side, I don’t have you.”It has that loose, dubious, it is not funny Mayer’t just good for publicity. It’s good for the arts.