Best Songs of 2013 – #7
It’s like clockwork. John Mayer always wins me over with a melancholy finger-picked ballad.
On his most recent album, Paradise Valley, it was ‘Dear Marie,’ a simple blues track sung to a woman he knew as a kid (assuming the song is autobiographical).
If it isn’t, I’m even more impressed, because one of the things I love best about ‘Dear Marie’ is its specificity. My favorite line is “From time to time I go looking for your photograph online; Some county judge in Ohio is all I ever find.” It’s such a sad little snapshot.
I also love the song’s coda. Just when you think it’s over, at about the 2:45 mark, it crescendos into a lovely and transcendent final minute.
Dear Marie, tell me what it was I used to be
And if you’re further up the road
Can you show me what I still can’t see
Remember me, I’m the boy you used to love
When we were fifteen
Remember me, I’m the boy you used to love
When we were fifteen
Now I wonder what you think
When you see me on the magazine
From time to time
I go looking for your photograph online
From time to time
I go looking for your photograph online
Some county judge in Ohio is all I ever find
Dear Marie, tell me do you still believe in me
Dear Marie, tell me do you still believe in me
Yeah I’ve got my dream but you’ve got family
Yeah I’ve got my dream but you’ve got family
Yeah I’ve got my dream but I guess it got away from me
Meet Me In Montauk 
Though I disagree with your description of this as blues, it is a pretty folk song nonetheless.. It sounds like something Bob Dylan would have done or perhaps even Jakob Dylan.