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John Mayer Launches Sob Rock Records for New Solo Music
Confirmed
In Short: Singer-songwriter John Mayer has launched his own label, Sob Rock Records, in partnership with Mercury Records, to release his first new solo music in five years.
Singer-songwriter John Mayer has launched his own label, Sob Rock Records, in partnership with Mercury Records, to release his first new solo music in five years. The first single, titled “Tom and Jerry,” is set to drop on Friday, according to Variety.
Mayer’s new venture, Sob Rock Records, shares the name of his last album for Sony, “Sob Rock,” released in 2021. The single “Tom and Jerry” was produced by Blake Slatkin with Mayer and mixed by Serban Genhea.
The credits for the new single acknowledge that it was recorded at Chaplin Studios, which Mayer and film director McG purchased in a significant endeavor. The studio was originally Charlie Chaplin’s and later became the home of A&M and Henson Studios.
Mayer’s return to solo recording comes after several years focusing on his role as co-frontman of Dead & Company. He had been the primary designer of the group’s residencies at Sphere in Las Vegas in 2024 and 2025.
Listeners to Mayer’s SiriusXM channel, Life With John Mayer, will get a preview of the new single throughout Thursday, with the official release scheduled for midnight on Friday.
Mayer’s upcoming live performances include a run of shows at Sphere in Las Vegas next year, marking a significant return to the stage after his recent focus on Dead & Company.
The new single’s release is part of Mayer’s broader plans to return to his solo career, which he had hinted at in interviews earlier this year.
In other news, AI music generator Suno has released a new set of models trained on licensed recordings from Warner Music Group, the first major label to settle with the company over copyright infringement.
Suno’s partnership with Warner Music Group will allow users to work directly with existing songs, remixing and reimagining them, marking a significant step in the company’s development.
The new models from Suno represent the first developed in direct partnership with the music industry, signaling a shift in how AI is integrated into music production.
What this adds
The release of Mayer’s new single and the launch of Sob Rock Records marks a significant return to his solo career after years of focusing on Dead & Company.
Suno’s partnership with Warner Music Group represents a shift in how AI is being integrated into the music industry, allowing for more direct collaboration between AI developers and major labels.
What's confirmed
- The fen, which is home to all sorts of diverse species, is one of many sites monitored by Natur am Byth’s Llŷn and Ynys Môn project, an initiative that aims to protect some of North Wales’ most at risk species in partnership with the RSPB.
What's still developing
- Mayer and McG shared their experience with taking the reins of the studio with Variety at the top of 2026; read about that here.
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- “This partnership is really about building these new products out in the future.” In court, the company has acknowledged that previous models were trained on essentially any music of usable quality it could find on the open web, defending that method as fair use.
- “The wrong way to think about this partnership is to think about it as a desire to license the data for our models,” he says.