I am fairly ambivalent to most musicians who aren't actively producing something I like, but there was a period of time where John Mayer was producing a lot of stuff that I managed to actively dislike. It was the horrible, slow, thoughtful side to pop and adult contemporary at the time, and I disliked almost everything about it, from remakes of Big Yellow Taxi to almost anything about any kind of war or politics, which seemed to be exceedingly popular in all genres, I was not interested if it wasn't a love song, a breakup song, or a wordless dance anthem (YouTube).
I was dismayed, then, when John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change" (YouTube) came on the radio, and not only did I not actively hate it, it felt as though the song had been written for me. It is calming in a way that I appreciate today that I didn't, maybe even couldn't appreciate eight years ago when it was new and all I really wanted were dance hits.
In addition to being calming, it now seems as though the song was really written for me and my interests as they stand today. It opens up saying that the establishment and people who are already adults believe people who are teenagers and in their 20s don't stand for anything, and won't. The core of the song truly is this contention between generations and the implied values therein. We (20-somethings) are waiting for you (40-60-somethings) to get out of the way so we can change the world to be as we'd like it to be. If we stood for something today, you'd just smash it down anyway.
Some specific points called out by Mayer in the video are that if our generation had a choice, we'd pull troops home, and that you need to be critical of the media because when they own the information, they can bend it all they want.
Given that you can't really accuse me of not talking about infrastructure, when I heard the song, I was definitely reminded by the integration of Comcast and NBC-Universal, and Comcast's new bid for Time Warner, to be the largest cable company by an even larger margin. Incidentally, I think I need to start looking at NBC's coverage of the Comcast/Time Warner deal. Comcast has control of NBC-U and they may be playing it a certain way, if they talk about it at all.
Given a choice, I still don't think that I'd go and listen to a John Mayer album on purpose, but it was interesting that it popped when and how it did, and I had the reaction to it I did.