John Mayer released Battle Studies on November 17, 2009, through Columbia Records in the United States. His fourth studio album, co-produced with Steve Jordan, followed 2006’s Continuum with a deliberate turn toward pop songwriting. Mayer spent six months living and working in a private California home before finishing at Capitol Studios, building a record that included the acoustic “Who Says” and Taylor Swift’s appearance on “Half of My Heart.”
Making that house work as a studio took more than moving in instruments. Engineer Chad Franscoviak enlisted Kaufman & Associates to adapt a 10,000-square-foot rental in Hidden Hills. The owner required its surfaces to remain intact, leaving the team to solve the acoustic problems without permanently altering the building. Heavy curtains lined with mass-loaded vinyl helped isolate sound, and separate spaces were treated for drums, vocals, acoustic guitars and a bass amplifier. A control room with a Neve console faced the backyard through two large windows. It was a domestic setting equipped for a substantial recording project.
The musical challenge was moving past an album Mayer knew people loved. In a 2010 Guitarist interview republished by MusicRadar, he described how comfortable it had become to have Continuum as his most recent statement. Making something different meant giving up that security. “I don’t make Continuum for a living,” he said. Accepting that the next record would have its own character helped him get started. He wanted to spend time with strummed songs and take a break from the more forceful guitar playing associated with his trio.
The lead single, “Who Says,” put an acoustic guitar at the center of a song about deciding what to do with your own life. Across the album, Mayer drew on the concise melodies of 1970s and ’80s California rock and pop. “Half of My Heart” added Swift’s voice to that approach, with Waddy Wachtel contributing acoustic baritone guitar.
His guitar ambitions were changing within those arrangements, too. In the Guitarist interview, Mayer singled out the lead melody in “Friends, Lovers or Nothing” as something he took particular pride in composing. He double-tracked the part, making the written line and its recorded texture central to the performance. The guitar still had a prominent role; the emphasis was on what a specific part contributed to the song.
“Crossroads” gave that approach a rougher edge. Mayer included his version of the blues standard, and a lesson he filmed for Guitar World around the album’s release explained how a Pete Cornish NG-2 fuzz pedal helped inspire the playing. The main riff depended on syncopated fingerpicking, with the solo also working around the beat. That short blues performance sat alongside the album’s pop material, keeping another side of his playing within the same record.
Battle Studies debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The recording work received a separate distinction in 2011, when Michael H. Brauer, Joe Ferla, Chad Franscoviak and Manny Marroquin won the Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for their work on the album.
