John Mayer's Song For Getting Older - "Born And Raised"

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John Mayer

Yesterday it was my birthday and somebody who has become a dear friend in the short space of less than a year helped make it a very memorable one. Pam Corkery, my co-host on Newstalk ZB's The Two (Sunday evenings 9pm-midnight), organized me a succession of gifts - presented on-air no less - including a framed picture of the most remarkable Jack Tame adjectives, rubber matchsticks to help keep my eyes open on my overnight shifts, a plastic cricket set and 50 metres of bubble-wrap. Yes, 50 metres of bubble-wrap.

Two of those gifts sound like they need a little more explaining. The Jack Tame one relates to our (good-natured) ribbing of the young One News US correspondent's column, read by eager fans like Pam and myself each week in the Herald On Sunday. Jack provides a slice of life for his readers about living in the USA and undoubtedly one day I will have to explain to him how yes, I am a nice guy, but yes, I have also spent much of 2012 making fun of his plucking of adjectives from the adjective-tree to such an extent I once counted 737 in one column alone. Slight exaggeration. However, on the infrequent occasions Jack doesn't drown his piece with words like "sweaty," "billowed," and "luxuriated," Pam and I feel more than a little deflated. We look forward to it all week.

As for the bubble-wrap, a couple of times I've mentioned to Pam my love of bubble-wrap and how I spent several hundred dollars on it when packaging up all my stuff before setting off on the OE a couple of years ago. "There's never enough bubble-wrap," I'd said sweatily as my white singlet billowed in the late summer breeze of March 2010, luxuriating on the merits of the poppy-plastic. The gift harks back to something another very dear friend gave me for my 21st 10 years ago: six kilograms of the spicy Indian snack bhuja-mix. Who doesn't love bhuja! Though that was a lot of bhuja and kept even me going for a month or five.

Pam Corkery

Veering dangerously close to self-indulgence, Pam and I ended last night's show with this song, the title track from John Mayer's latest album Born And Raised. It's a song about getting older and like much of the album, is a homage to 70s-style singer-songwriters like Neil Young. Not coincidentally, Neil's old cohorts David Crosby and Graham Nash provide background vocals.

Listen out for lyrics about dreams not flying "as high as they used to," of it getting hard to "fake what I won't be," but still having both time and faith and the support of your family. For someone often accused of arrogance, these might just be his most relatable, humble lyrics.