Mayer Hawthorne is another LA based songwriter from the young generation who draws his inspiration from the 60’s. But Andrew Mayer Cohen has actually two alter-egos, since Haircut is his hip-hop side and Mayer Hawthorne his Rhythm & Blues-soul persona he had just created for fun at first (Hawthorne is the name of the street he grew up on), but which really caught up!
Exposed to music very young, soul music had stayed in his own soul from the beginning and when you grow up close to Detroit, you are exposed to a lot of it. He regularly cites Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Barry White, Leroy Hutson, Smokey Robinson, etc., as influences.
His song ‘Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin’’ from the album ‘A Strange Arrangement’ is so light and easy to enjoy that it will make you go back to your sweetest Motown memories, probably because of a Supremes’ ‘You can’t hurry love’ beat which is going on in the song, a total retro ear candy for the present time. Mayer rearranges his feel good sound with sax and horns and a somewhat Smokey voice.
If the album was released a year ago, the video for the song directed by Jackson Perry and Henry DeMaio has just come out, just in time for the summer: it’s hot out there, so this will refresh you like a cool pink-cherry lemonade. It’s sunny but the girls are in bikinis, there is shade and a pool, and everyone seems extremely happy. What else can I say? Life seems really good for Mr. Mayer Hawthorne
Watch it here: