“Tom and Jerry” brings John Mayer back to solo releases while introducing a new label partnership built around his own Sob Rock Records.
John Mayer’s Sob Rock Records era now has its first release. “Tom and Jerry,” issued October 23, is his first new solo single since 2021’s Sob Rock, and it arrives through the imprint he has launched in partnership with Mercury Records. The song and the business announcement belong to the same new chapter: Mayer is returning with fresh material while putting his own label name on the release.
The recording pairs Mayer with co-writer and co-producer Blake Slatkin, with sessions taking place at Chaplin Recording Studios in Hollywood. Mayer contributes vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, keyboards, synthesizer and programming; Serban Ghenea mixed the track and Randy Merrill mastered it. As JamBase details, the personnel also connect this return to several earlier phases of his recording career.
Pino Palladino plays bass, Aaron Sterling supplies drums and percussion, Lenny Castro adds percussion and Larry Goldings plays organ. Palladino’s connection with Mayer includes the John Mayer Trio, while Sterling’s album credits run through Born and Raised, Paradise Valley, The Search for Everything and Sob Rock. The new label does not mean a clean break with the musicians who helped shape Mayer’s catalog.
The title began as the name Mayer gave an early voice memo, a small detail that places the song’s origin before the larger machinery of a release campaign. Its first public broadcast came on October 22 through LIFE with John Mayer, his SiriusXM channel, before the October 23 global release. That rollout gave his own programming platform the premiere, then brought the recording to streaming listeners the next day.
The five-year interval applies to new solo releases, not to an absence from music. Mayer has continued performing with Dead & Company, and his SiriusXM channel launched in November 2023. The Sob Rock name itself also carries continuity: it was the title of his eighth studio album, which included “Last Train Home” and “Wild Blue,” before becoming the banner for this Mercury partnership.
Mayer has also announced a Sphere residency that brings several versions of his musicianship into one evening. The 18-show Las Vegas run, spanning April through June 2027, is set to include solo, full-band and John Mayer Trio performances each night. Alongside that live plan, “Tom and Jerry” gives the new recording phase a concrete starting point: one song, a familiar circle of players and a newly established route for releasing what comes next.
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