John Mayer has responded (again) to one of his career's biggest questions: who was his hit song "Your Body Is a Wonderland" really about?
The musician revealed the answer to host Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast's first-ever holiday special.
"That was about my first girlfriend," Mayer, 45, admitted to Cooper.
"That was about the feeling, which I think was already sort of nostalgic," he said. "I was 21 when I wrote that song and I was nostalgic for being 16."
"Your Body Is a Wonderland" was the second major single released from Mayer's 2001 debut album titled, Room for Squares. It was an instant hit, winning him the best male pop vocal performance Grammy the following year and spurring fans to guess who the song was about. Since the singer was dating Jennifer Love Hewitt at the time, many assumed the actress was the inspiration behind the tune.
"That's one of those things where people just sort of formed that idea," the "New Light" singer said of the assumptions. "It gets reinforced over the years… I had never met a celebrity when I wrote that song."
The guitarist also talked about his songwriting process and what truly inspires him, saying he doesn't write "for people or about people."
Mayer explained further: "I might use a relationship that inspires me to write something. So yeah, even if I was writing a song because of someone, it's like, that goes away, and I'm left with the song."
The singer-songwriter revisited the topic of his high school love in his 2013 song "Dear Marie," asking, "Dear Marie, tell me what it was I used to be .... Remember me? / I'm the boy you used to love when we were 15 / Now I wonder what you think / When you see me in a magazine ... Dear Marie, tell me do you still believe in me? I've got my dream but you've got yourself a family."
And though the singer did tell Cooper who his infamous song was about, it's not something Mayer will be doing regularly moving forward.
"I don't like telling anyone that a song is about somebody because most of the time it's not," he said. "And it takes people away from themselves because they're just visualizing who I'm writing about."
