Bridge time then no more from me! I love analyzing but it gets tiring quick. But hey, this sure beats analyzing classical music endlessly in school and I'm spring break so why not analyze pop music?!?!



Alright, let's modulate! We go to G major via our handy chromatic mediant relationship between E major and G major already explained.



We start on the ii of G major, that being A minor. He plays an Ami9 chord here. The next chord is the V chord and he plays a D9 before heading home to G. This ii-V-I thing is as common as I-IV-V and the voicings he chose are just as common in jazz. You'll see it all over. It's cliche, but cliche's aren't bad. They work. If you want to play a million of them in a tune, look up "Recordame." Buckets of fun......the first time...then never again...exaggerated...sure...



The I chord is just a Gmaj7add9 more or less though we have no B (3) in the chord which typically is a no no, but you know, as far as the ears are concerned we get the point. A minor chord with a major 7th in it is super rare anyways and sticks out like a sore thumb. This is clearly prepared by the ii-V-I and shines through just fine.



We throw a quick vii/ii in there to get back to the ii chord. So you've got a G# fully diminished seventh chord to get some nice chromatic voice leading back to ii. Nothing special here.



Next we just go to the vi which is an E minor chord. In this case, just an E minor 7 I believe. I honestly can't remember what he plays exactly here but I'm pretty sure it's just a straight Emi7 and it certainly makes enough sense.



Next chord is a V7/V chord, that being an A7 chord. But it's one of those weird ones with no 5 but instead a 4th in it so instead of A C# E G you've got A C# D G. Why? I don't know. It sounds cool. Sometimes that's enough. It does allow us to have that same D tone hanging in the progression until the final chord which takes us back to the chorus and E major. Maybe that's the reason, but again, a certain amount of analyzing is quite subjective. The bigger thing to realize here is that this secondary dominant is ultimately taking us to D though we detour briefly beforehand.



Instead of going straight to D we go quickly to a C chord. In the key it's just a IV but we're doing something more interesting here. Oh yeah, it's a Csus2 chord...because it's effing cool and it allows us to hang on that D note I mentioned. But also, it's very common to have a V/V go to IV instead of V but usually the V comes into play somewhere as in V/V-IV-V. We don't just want to toss around secondary dominants without any rhyme or reason. The altered tonality implies something that the ear consciously or sub-consciously understands and it wants to hear the resolutions implied. When you don't resolve secondary dominants the way they typically go, you should ensure that they have some sort of plausible resolution like in the verse when he plays a Bb half-diminished that goes to A instead of B. It's comparable to a half-cadence in this sense I guess you could say.



Anyways, we finally get to that D chord and it's again the return of that funky A7 with a 4 instead of a 5. I dig it though. I'm assuming he did it here to draw out the resolution a bit and allow that 4-3 suspension in the first chorus chord to have a stronger effect. But before that, this D7 chord is the V7 of G and typically we'd expect it to go to I or G. But...



Instead, as you remember we go to the C instead of a D. So what's happening here? C to D to E. That C in the middle adds forward or ascending momentum to the progression. The parallel motion that occurs between C and D like this especially when the D becomes tonicized by the A7 propels the progression to E major to continue the parallel motion. So in G you have V7/V - IV - V7 and in E we have IV - bVI - bVII - I (E major). That bVI - bVII - I progression is pretty potent and allows us to have a convincing modulation from G major again based on the parallel motion and the A7 (V7/V) diverting us slightly from the G which is otherwise where we'd expect it to go. It's not rocket science, but it's perfectly executed.



Now, did John Mayer think like this when he was writing the tune? Heaven knows. Maybe. I can sit here and explain it to you all day long so you might that I think like that, but after awhile this stuff becomes so inherent that you just don't think about it. When you play, this is just stuff you throw in. That's why I'm such a huge fan of theory. It gives you such a wide vocabulary so that you can better express yourself. All you're doing is putting a name to what the ear already understands and the more you can clearly define and understand these things on a mental and auditory level, the better you will be at expressing yourself.



So hey, you want to learn all this stuff, just study theory. Hit it hard and keep an open mind. Don't look at it like a series of rules so much as vocabulary. Rules won't get you very far. Vocabulary will open the world to you. Enjoy and love music more than anything. And I think I should start a service where people paypal me money to analyze this stuff. While this was fun and a good mental exercise for me, it's too much work to do all over the place! But hey, enjoy!