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Continuum 2006
Album · by John Mayer ↗ View artist

Continuum

John Mayer recorded Continuum between January 2005 and July 2006 in four different studios: The Village Recorder in Los Angeles, Avatar Studios and Right Track in New York, and Royal Studios in Memphis. The album was produced alongside Steve Jordan, a drummer who had previously worked with him in the trio John Mayer Trio and on his live album Try!. The session featured Pino Palladino on bass, a musician who later became key to the album’s sound. The stylistic shift was clear: Continuum moved away from the pop rock of earlier work to dive into blues, soul, and rock with heavier emphasis on guitars and organic grooves. The title was no accident: Mayer had been discussing his obsession with time in his Esquire columns since April 2005, where he mentioned that the recording process for this album left him without clear references about his place in music.

Year
2006
Songs
12
Duration
50 min 8 seg
Listen to the album ★

12 song|s

Song list

# Title Available ⏱
01

Waiting on the World to Change

Intermediate

3:21 02

I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)

Intermediate

4:52 03

Belief

Intermediate

4:02 05

The Heart of Life

Advanced

3:19 06

Stop This Train

Intermediate

4:55 06

Vultures

Intermediate

4:12 07

Gravity

Intermediate

4:06 08

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

Intermediate

4:02 09

Bold as Love

Advanced

4:18 10

Dreaming With a Broken Heart

Intermediate

4:08 11

In Repair

Intermediate

6:10 12

I'm Gonna Find Another You

Intermediate

2:43

About the album

Continuum, according to DoReSol

The album opens with Waiting on the World to Change, a song that became his biggest radio hit at the time. But three tracks define the heart of the record: Gravity —a studio version of a song already performed live with the trio—, Belief, where Mayer’s guitar sounds rawer and more direct, and Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, an instrumental that showcases his growth as a guitarist. It also includes Bold as Love, Mayer’s first studio cover of a Hendrix song, though he had performed it live years earlier, even at the Tsunami Aid charity concert in January 2005. Another standout collaboration is In Repair, featuring Charlie Hunter on his 8-string guitar. Stop This Train has an interesting backstory: Mayer wrote it in a hotel bed while bedridden with kidney stones, searching for a new place to live. The album cover plays with the idea of continuity: the title’s typography forms an infinity symbol between the letters "C" and "o", and the inner images include photos he took himself in the studios, with handwritten notes like "*this is what my heart looks like*."

Released on September 12, 2006, Continuum debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 with over 300,000 copies sold in its first week. Globally, it surpassed 5 million copies and earned Mayer two Grammy Awards in 2007: Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Rolling Stone ranked it among the best albums of 2006 and, in 2020, included it in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Reissues of the album altered cover details —from a grayscale photo of Mayer to versions with silver covers—, but the musical content remained unchanged: a record recorded with borrowed equipment, without excessive corrections, where intuition and groove take precedence over technical perfection.

Discography

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