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Continuum is a gorgeously produced, brilliantly stripped-to-basics album that incorporates blues, soft-funk, R&B, folk and pop in a sound that is totally owned by Mayer. It's no stretch when trying to describe the sound of Continuum to color it in the light of work by such legends as Sting, Eric Clapton, Sade, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Steve Winwood.
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It's likely that the first couple of times you hear it, it may just wash over you completely. Yet give it a few plays and Mayer's unique ability to reflect on the human condition cannot fail to charm.
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MojoA great blue-eyed soul record. [Dec 2006, p.108]
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Rolling StoneA smart, breezy album that deftly fuses his love for old-school blues and R&B with his natural gift for sharp melodies and well-constructed songs. [21 Sep 2006, p.81]
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Mr. Mayer has been writing songs again, good ones, with all the leanness and directness that distinguish his strongest work.
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Many of Continuum's songs are on the softer, adult alternative side, but his melodic voice, warm production, complex riffs and thoughtful lyrics should cure the violent reactions Mayer's name used to evoke.
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BlenderWhere his earlier music was a parade of bright primary colors, these plaintive melodies come in delicious shades of gray. [Oct 2006, p.138]
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While Continuum doesn’t necessarily contain a sure-thing pop hit, it’s one of the few mainstream pop/rock albums that’s satisfying from the beginning to the end.
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The tunes are shapely throughout Continuum, and the musicianship is elegant and virtuosic -- but in song after song, the music's low-key loveliness dissipates into a sleep-inducing soft-rock haze.
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On "Waiting on the World to Change," Mayer breathily imagines a world where frat boys get off their couches and have people sign petitions. Sigh. A little more of that and less of noodley songs like "Vultures" and "Gravity" would have been a good step toward reminding us who Mayer really is.
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[The] laid-back ballads are Mayer's forte; when he gets more worked up, as on the politically minded first single "Waiting on the World to Change," or an overeager version of Hendrix's "Axis: Bold as Love," his mood tightens up unpleasantly.
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With no edge to the songwriting and with such spit-polished, tasteful production, Continuum just doesn't convince as a heady, soulful rock album or as Mayer's creative quantum leap forward.
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He calmly circles the same career themes with the same warmed-over, palatable guitar weavings: girls are scary, girls are sad, getting older is weird, home is nice.
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In the end Continuum feels like little-more than the self-indulgent effort of a possibly-peaked pop star.
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Paste MagazineA couple songs on Continuum do hint at what Mayer is capable of if he can shed his perfectionist skin and get to the quick of his emotions. [Nov 2006, p.76]
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It's still hard to tell if he's a bluesman in a soft-rocker's body or vice versa, and "Continuum" is the sound of him trying to figure it out too.
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UncutOnly on the superb, slow-burning "Gravity" does he really sound like himself. [Nov 2006, p.119]
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Q MagazineUltimately, this is dour stuff reminiscent of a yogic Sting. [Dec 2006, p.138]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 146 out of 164
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Mixed: 7 out of 164
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Negative: 11 out of 164
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Feb 2, 2014
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Aug 4, 2023
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Apr 25, 2023