The artist: John Mayer

The album: Battle Studies (Columbia)

The spin: Listeners who put on a pop record and are greeted with the sound of an orchestra tuning up may fear they’re in for an hour of self-importance. But the latest from soft-pop superstar John Mayer doesn’t want to shake the earth, it just wants someone to love.

Fair enough. But instead of wooing the listener, the singer is intent on first convincing her of the wreck old loves have made of him. “I’m in the war of my life,” he croons on one track; “if fear hasn’t killed me yet,” he claims, “then nothing will.” But there’s not a drop of passion in his voice, and Mayer doesn’t appear to know there should be.

He nearly pulls off the sad-sack act on “Perfectly Lonely,” but even there isn’t fit to hold the Kleenex of another smooth-sounding pretty boy, Chris Isaak, who understands how to make languor sound truly heartbroken.

Mayer delivers plenty of radio-friendly pop here, like the gently catchy “Who Says,” but his take on “Crossroads,” in which his buzzing rhythm guitar sounds like a sound effect from a ’50s sci-fi movie, hardly bolsters his blues credentials.

He’s at his best on “Half of My Heart” (joined by pop-country phenom Taylor Swift) and “Friends, Lovers or Nothing,” two takes on romantic ambivalence in which the songwriter actually seems to know whereof he sings.

The grade: C

– John DeFore