John Mayer

John Mayer’s fresh-faced glee in infusing his upbeat songs and versatile guitar work with pop, blues, and soul—and making a trophy bitch of all those genres—has long made him a scapegoat for pop-haters (that and “Your Body Is A Wonderland,” which continues to irritate eight years later). Mayer recently earned himself even more animosity with a Playboy interview that included too many details about his love life, not to mention casually dropped racial and homophobic slurs. Outrage spread across the Internet, but the guitarist’s fan base appears unaffected. Mayer issued an emotional apology to a supportive Nashville audience, and if he wasn’t bulletproof before, the tears certainly did the trick. 

Updated 02/17/2010