John Mayer broke onto the music scene with his album Room for Squares, an album filled with songs such as “Your Body is a Wonderland” and “83,” geared for the teenage girl audience, while utilizing his heartthrob image, boyish charm and acoustic guitar melodies to initiate his original appeal.

However, in the past nine years with his latest album, Battle Studies, released in November 2009, Mayer has evolved into a bluesy, adult-contemporary songwriter, with a devout passion for making music. This fact was evident in his concert at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn., last Tuesday, March 2.

Mayer’s latest album release doesn’t rely on his fancy fretwork and guitar solos, but the attraction of a live concert allowed Mayer to demonstrate some of his musical capabilities, which are sometimes lost by just listening to one of his albums.

Mayer kicked off his concert with the up-tempo soft rock opener on Battle Studies called “Heartbreak Warfare” before transitioning into the bluesy techno feel of “Crossroads.” After these two songs from his new album, Mayer brought back the nostalgic feelings with “Vultures” and “Why Georgia.”

Despite generating a strong upbeat rock vibe in the arena with a couple more songs, Mayer displayed his full guitar repertoire by shifting into a short acoustic segment of the concert, including “In Your Atmosphere” and the popular Tom Petty cover “Free Fallin’.”

Mayer had seemingly not broken into his true concert groove until he busted into the dark and ominous “Assassin,” which concluded with a scintillating guitar solo. From this point in the concert, Mayer intermixed solos from drummer Steve Jordan and keyboardist Charlie Wilson with solos of his own, covering more songs off his newest album such as “Half of My Heart,” “Perfectly Lonely” and “Edge of Desire,” while dispersing more classics from his Continuum album including “Waiting On the World to Change,” “Belief” and “Gravity.”

After nearly two hours on stage, Mayer was quickly recalled for an encore. He launched into his only single off his newest album, the acoustic stoner tune “Who Says,” and ended the show with his popular classic “No Such Thing.”

It was astounding to see how Mayer evolved from the artist writing sensitive acoustic songs to appeal to his teenage girl fans to an eclectic musician with a true passion for a deeper meaning to his songs. I found this extremely evident when he relayed to the fans his feelings of gratitude for attending the concert, even though he considered himself to have somewhat “made it” in the music industry. Yet, he noted that his passion and love for music is deeper than ever before. His new songs reflect his maturity and an intention to find a deeper understanding in life.

Thankfully, this concert was not designated for the adolescent girl hoping for Mayer to read her “Will You Marry Me?” poster (although he did make the point to notice one such sign), but instead aimed to demonstrate Mayer’s growth as a musician, most notably as a songwriter and guitarist.

By my standards, he’s quite good at both. I give this concert 3 out of 3 crowns.