On a recent episode of our Whiskey Riff Raff podcast this month, Parker McCollum shared some of his neatest and most notable experiences on his rise to country stardom.
In addition to opening up for both the Chief and King George, McCollum added:
“There’s only like three men in the world who make my heart race when I’m standing there talking to them…”
Shockingly, he didn’t note the two previously mentioned men, but went on to add:
“John Mayer is up there.”
McCollum continued the conversation on Mayer saying that he felt John Mayer’s songwriting was underrated, and that he “doesn’t get the credit he deserves.”
Further into the interview, Parker even directly credits John Mayer as a source for his own writing ingenuity, stating that listening to Mayer’s music has often created a muse for McCollum to write his own lines afterwards.
In fact, Parker’s such a big John Mayer fan that he even released his own cover of Mayer’s “Perfectly Lonely” just a couple months ago as an Amazon exclusive.
Surprisingly, Parker McCollum is not the only country music headliner who feels similarly about the acoustics and libretto of John Mayer.
In a May 2021 interview on Ernest’s podcast, Just Being Ernest, Jordan Davis and Ernest also discuss the overarching impact of Mayer’s music, jokingly asking “who wouldn’t want to be John Mayer.” As it turns out, many other country music stars concur.
John Mayer is so popular among country music’s stars, in fact, that two country music superstars have collaborated with him for episodes of CMT Crossroads.
Way back in 2004, John Mayer and Brad Paisley were featured on a CMT Crossroads special together, just a few years after both artists had burst onto their respective music scenes.
And then in 2010, Mayer returned for another episode of Crossroads, this time with Keith Urban.
And as it turns out, Parker McCollum isn’t even the only guy from the Texas music scene who appreciates Mayer’s work: On his 2015 album Underdog, Aaron Watson included a cover of Mayer’s 2013 hit “Wildfire.”
Hell, Lindsay Ell even released her own version of Mayer’s entire 2006 album Continuum. Released in 2018, The Continuum Project was actually Lindsay’s homework assignment from her producer before she recorded her first studio album.
Kristian Bush of Sugarland, who produced Ell’s first album, asked her what her favorite album was, and she named Mayer’s Continuum. He then told her to get into the studio and record the entire album herself: The instruments, the vocals, the production, all of it herself.
So that’s what she did. And when fans heard the story, of course they wanted to hear the album.
So yeah, John Mayer has had quite the influence on country music.
His melodies, labeled anywhere from soft rock to blues and R&B, have done the trick to inspire rising stars in the country realm, leaving us to ponder his role as the most underrated country music muse.
And who can forget when Mayer brought out Chris Stapleton for this incredible performance of a brand new song they had just written during his show in Nashville a couple years ago:
Sounds like even country music’s biggest muse is inspired by Chris Stapleton.
