Singer-songwriter John Mayer released his latest record and wanted to revisit his childhood by creating music inspired by 1980s sounds.

Mayer said: "I think everyone who makes music comes at it from a fantasy, but for me the fantasy this time was, what if it's 1988 and I had had a band in the late sixties through the seventies, and now I'm my age in the eighties and people are handing me these things called chorus pedals, or people are going, 'Hey, you don't need a tube amp anymore.' And I go, 'You don't? Okay. This sounds great...'"

The star told Guitar World magazine that he was putting "more and more and more" melody on each track, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

The singer shared: "There is nothing in this record that has any sandpaper on it.

"I went, 'Well, I'm just going to go for it. I'm just going to be as absolutely melodic and generous as I can be.' And I was just putting more and more and more melody on each and every one of these songs. That's the fun I had on this record."

The 43-year-old singer also said that every track was hard work as he tried to install as many "layers" as possible on the album.

He said: "It took forever to work on these songs. It was like, here's the three-and-a-half minutes – how do you inject it with as many moments and layers as possible? How can you just keep jampacking it with payoffs?"

"What we're really talking about is, what's so wrong about a guilty pleasure? Or what's so guilty about someone making a record that goes, 'I'm setting out to please you as much as I possibly can with the art of melody.'"

He concluded: "Someone may not like that, but I'm proud to go down with that ship."