John Mayer was interviewed by the New York Times this weekend, but I only saw the interview because Gawker had a story about it called “All John Mayer Interviews Now Lead to the Same Conclusion: He’s (Probably) a Date Rapist.” Gawker even pulls quotes from last month’s infamous New York Magazine interview with Mayer where he acted like a f-cking douche and ended the interview saying “I’m going to forcefully sodomize your editor.” Yeah. Is this particularly “date-rapey”? Not really. I would classify this as “dumb douche who thinks he’s clever makes a stupid joke in an attempt to funny”.

Anyway, onto the NYT interview. Mayer doesn’t come across as badly as the other piece, but he still sounds like a piece of work (to me). I guess some girls go for his shtick, but he gives me a headache. I just feel like he’s trying too hard. Like everything he does screams “preening”. Here are some of the highlights from the piece (full NYT article here):

“I should be having sex with more girls.” This is what John Mayer concluded, using slightly more colorful language, last Sunday night at his anonymously modern apartment in SoHo.

They’re everywhere, after all, and Mr. Mayer has not been unwilling in the past. But the last couple of years, full of tabloids and TMZ, have taken their toll.

“It’s crazy to me that in my head, that being 32 and dating women is going to get me in trouble,” he said, talking faster as he went along. “I can’t even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It’s a nightmare.”

Being an ambivalent, self-aware heartthrob has its downsides, it turns out, and Mr. Mayer, who in his day job is one of the most popular soft-rock singers of the last decade, isn’t shy about sharing them. In the three years since his last album, the double-platinum “Continuum” (Columbia), was released, he’s become a demiceleb of the tabloid world, as well known for his arm candy — Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston — and his tests of will with the media as for his music. But now it’s music time again, right?

If Mr. Mayer has successfully put his cynicism about women and romance into one album, then “Battle Studies” (Columbia), released on Tuesday, is it — “one record about one thing,” Mr. Mayer said. It’s claustrophobic and, for him, somewhat dark. Most of the songs are skeptical about love, and about lovers, and about anyone looking and passing judgment from the outside in.”

“There’s nothing I’ve done musically that’s been a wild misstep,” he said. “Basically, you’re saying, can you risk failure? And that’s something that I’m struggling with right now, because in my life, I would like to do something in music that risks a misstep.”

“I’m too young to be that dependable,” he continued. “I don’t want to be that dependable. Something pendulous has to happen. If I’m as self-aware as I say I am, then I would probably know that pretty soon, there’s going to have to be a wrench thrown somewhere so that the momentum keeps moving forward.”

It’s hard to listen to [Mayer’s fourth album] “Battle Studies” without wondering: This is the same person who delivered a homily about ending his relationship with Ms. Aniston on a New York street corner in front of a TMZ camera? Who (jokingly, he insists) tussled with a reporter for New York magazine’s Web site, nymag.com, resulting in a piece headlined “John Mayer Threatens to Sodomize Us”?

“What is the odd man out,” he said, “is it the record or the coverage? I’m not going to let it be the record. I think if you’re listening to ‘Battle Studies’ and you think it’s a record about high-profile relationships, I haven’t done a good enough job.”

“They say I’m a womanizer,” he complained. “I say I haven’t met enough women.”

[From The New York Times]

There’s a lot of stuff about John’s new album and the writer claims Mayer is “one of the most technically skilled guitar players of the day” but I found the most interesting quotes to be about Mayer’s personal stuff, of course. The quote “I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution” is really telling, isn’t it? For some reason, I don’t think Mayer was talking out of his ass on that one. I really do think he’s a self-loathing closet case. And I think he’s a misogynist, for real. I think he hates women very passionately. But that’s just my take.

John Mayer outside the Ed Sullivan Theater for the ‘Late Show With David Letterman’ on November 19, 2009. Credit: WENN