Rocker John Mayer is convinced he’s a changed man after leaving his bad boy reputation firmly in his past.
The Your Body Is a Wonderland singer developed a reputation as an egotistical narcissist during the height of his fame, during which he was linked to a string of famous stars, including Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Minka Kelly, and Taylor Swift.
His wild behaviour peaked in 2010 when he sat down for a very candid interview with Playboy magazine, in which he dished on all of his celebrity exes and famously described Simpson as “sexual napalm”, but after battling vocal issues which threatened to derail his career, John realised he needed to take a step back from the limelight and grow up.
He quit Twitter and moved from Los Angeles to Montana, where he was able to regroup and rethink the direction his life had been going in.
Now enjoying a more low-key existence, John insists he’s nothing like the guy who used to always hog the headlines – and he wishes critics would acknowledge that.
“Some people still say, ‘That guy’s a d**k,'” he tells Billboard. “And I go, ‘Well, any of that data you’re working off of is really old.’ I mean, I can tell you for sure that I haven’t been a d**k in many years. That’s a really outdated take.”
The musician, now 41 and single, accepts his behaviour was out of control during his youth because he let his fame go straight to his head.
“I probably had a run in my life where I wasn’t aware that there was anything I couldn’t have. And it made a monster out of me,” John says. “And there’s something very freeing about (realising) ‘you can’t’. And that’s about the right age in your life where you go, ‘Yeah, you can’t.'”
The singer has since found happiness shunning Hollywood parties in favour of jamming onstage with his music icons, including the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, with whom he’s toured under the name Dead & Company, but his love life is still tabloid fodder, after dating Katy Perry on and off from 2012 to 2015, and being linked to pop star Halsey just this week (begs05Nov18).
The Closer hitmaker appeared to shut down the romance speculation on Wednesday night, as she took to Twitter and indicated they were just pals.
“Just had a ground breaking idea,” she wrote. “What if…we let female artists…have friends…without assuming that they are sleeping together (sic)? I know I know. It’s like, completely ambitious but like, imagine if we like, tried?”
Halsey’s comments emerged after the two stars had openly flirted online, weeks after she called it quits with rapper G-Eazy for the second time this year.