An Analysis Of Joh John Mayer's Waiting On The World To Change

Jordan Gonzales
Professor Romero
English 68
11 November 2011
Waiting on the World to Change
John Clayton Mayer was born October 16, 1977 and was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut but was raised in Fairfield, Connecticut. He is an American blues/pop rock musician, as well as a singer/songwriter. He attended Berkley College of Music in Boston. He now lives in New York City after moving to Atlanta in his younger years where he began to put his name out in the open and become recognized by thousands of fans. His first two studio albums, Room for Squares and Heavier Things, did well as he achieved a multi-platinum status. In 2003, he won a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for “Your Body Is a Wonderland.” But he has had plenty of interviews about a specific song in particular, “Waiting on the World to Change”.
John Mayer has explained in interviews that “Waiting on the World to Change,” the lead single from his album Continuum, is an attempt to explain political inaction in his generation.
The words are seen as slightly harsh but ring true as they depict a wide range of the American public rendered obsolete due to a sense of being powerless to do anything about current problems. The hope present in the song comes from a faith that things will someday change, and Mayer's generation, in their late 20's and early 30's, will one day be given the sense of power and respect deserved. There are a few hints as well as to what his generation will do when they take key leadership roles. War will come to an end and truth will rule the communication of information. The lyrical intensity of “Waiting on the World to Change” is backed with an incredible instrumentation bringing to light the pop side of
Mayer.
There are many poetic devices throughout the song such as rhyme, alliteration, hyperbole, repetition, imagery. For rhyme, “Me and all my friends, We're all misunderstood, They say we stand for nothing, and There's no way we ever could” misunderstood rhymes with could. For alliteration, “going wrong, With the world and those who lead it, We just feel like we” the ‘w’ sound is repeated several times throughout this stanza. For hyperbole, “Cause when they own the information, oh They can bend it all they want” one cannot actually own information and it can also not be bent literally. For repetition, “Waiting on the world to change” this line is repeated throughout the song about 15 times. For imagery, “Now if we had the power, To bring our neighbors home from war, They would have never missed a Christmas, No more ribbons on their door” an imagery can be visualized of a family having lost a loved one to a war and symbolizing that by a ribbon.