John Mayer and Katy Perry
David Kogut/Polaris
The lovebirds have recorded a duet they wrote together, “Who You Love,” for Mayer’s new album, Paradise Valley (due out Aug. 20), and the song gives lyrical insight into the on-again couple’s irresistible attraction to each other and hints that they split in March because Mayer wasn’t ready to be in a relationship.
The mid-tempo track features Mayer, 35, singing the lines: “My girl, she ain’t the one that I saw coming / sometimes I don’t know which way to go / and I tried to run before but I’m not running anymore / ’cause I fought against it hard enough to know / that you love who you love who you love / you can’t make yourself stop dreaming of who you’re dreaming of / if it’s who you love, then it’s who you love.”
Trading verses, Perry – whose own album, Prism, will be out Oct. 22 – hints at Mayer’s bad-boy reputation when she responds with: “My boy he ain’t the one that I saw coming / and some have said his heart’s too hard to hold / and it takes a little time / but you should see him when he shines / ’cause you never want to let that feeling go / when you love who you love who you love.”
As for her laugh at the end of the tune, Perry, 28, tells SIRIUSXM’s Morning Mash Up “that’s just a love giggle. It’s like the ones that Mariah Carey had in 1990,” she jokes. “I was going for that, I think I was just so happy … You’re catching the real moment there.”
Perry admitted to Vogue in June that she was “still madly in love” with Mayer months after they broke up, and said that despite his playboy reputation, he had a “beautiful mind” but a “tortured soul.”
Mayer, who had high-profile relationships with Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson and was rumored to have had a fling with Taylor Swift in the past, dedicated a song to Perry during a concert in July, saying he was grateful she had taken the time “to get to know me and love me” when he was recovering from granuloma surgeries on his vocal chords rendering him unable to speak.
