Why John Mayer And Katy Perry Belong Together

Katy Perry and John Mayer are still in an "off-again" phase, but let's be honest: the whole world is just waiting for these two to get back together for the umpteenth time. Why? Because these two hitmakers are pretty much made for each other.

Before they got together, Katy Perry and John Mayer both desperately sought validation in the form of the media spotlight.

Perry admitted as much in a 2010 interview with Rolling Stone, when she, then engaged to Russell Brand, confessed, "Any artist who says they don't Google their name is a big fat liar." She then insulted Miley Cyrus on Twitter to ensure she got Google Alerts and "a shot of attention" for it, per the interviewer.

Perry's pattern continued during the earlier stages of her relationship with Mayer, most notably when she stepped out showing off bling on her ring finger of her left hand numerous times throughout the "on-again" stages of their romance.

Mayer, meanwhile, gave his infamous interviews about exes Jennifer Aniston and Jessica "sexual napalm" Simpson, as well as about pornography and masturbation, ensuring he'd get himself headlines — even though those headlines ended up doing much more harm than good to his reputation.

Mayer told Ronan Farrow in March 2015, "The greatest moment for me was giving up the big fight, the big fight to be this thing that gets off the airplane at LAX and floats through."

After a brief split from Perry in April 2013, he revealed on Ellen DeGeneres (via People), "It was a very private relationship going in. It was a private relationship during and it's a private relationship, still. I can understand asking the question ... I'm on the same journey as everyone else. Coupling is a tricky thing. I can understand asking the question [about the breakup with Perry] based on some previous answers I have given, but I have finally learned how to put the wall between one thing and the other. I've been much happier since then."

After reuniting, Perry explained to Entertainment Weekly in October 2013, "I want to have a normal life with a normal relationship and I don't want to be forced to just hang out in a hotel room all the time. I keep enough to myself. I'm going to go on dates and movies and dinners and when I do it's not because I'm trying to garner any kind of publicity, it's because it's something that is just an inevitable byproduct of this life. It's never my main focus, it's never intentional. [My] ideal date is just dinner and a movie. It's so normal. And a hike, we love to hike."

In 2013, Mayer told CBS Sunday Morning of his prior foot-in-mouth disease, "It's very liberating when you finally realize it's impossible to make everyone like you. I wanted everybody to like me. I thought I was one shuck and jive away in every direction ... I was just a jerk."

Mayer admitted in a March 2015 sitdown with Ronan Farrow, "I'm a recovered ego addict. The only way that I can be sure that I don't relapse is to admit that I constantly have this ego addiction — every day." In June 2016, after he and Perry split for what seemed like the final time, he told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live that he was finally ready for a commitment. "I'm ready to roll, I'm more mature than I've ever been. The stage is set, but I'm excited for a meet cute at some point. I'm single and I'm excited about the future."

He also told NPR in November 2013, "I was 28 for four years. Now I just feel this capacity to love and to be happier."

He told The New York Times in March 2017 that he finally feels his own age, pontificating, "I wish there was somebody to throw me the 40th [birthday party]. I want the baby with the protective earphones [by the side of the stage]. I'm right on time for my career, and I'm running late for my life."

Perry explained to GQ in January 2014 of her initial split from Mayer, "I think that I needed to grow up ... I'm just having a wonderful experience with a wonderful guy. There's no rush."

She explained to Harper's Bazaar that a lot of what went wrong in her relationship was her own fault. "What I've learned is that if you don't have the foundation of self-love first, you really have nowhere to pull love from to give it away. I had to learn about taking care of myself before I could take care of others," she said in a September 2014 interview. "I want to mommy everyone. I want to take care of them. I want to save them, and I forget myself in the meantime. I learned that through therapy."

She added, "[I'm] open. As I'm heading into my 30s I have less time for bulls**t. I look for the same characteristics: a sense of humor — someone who makes me laugh off the charts — someone who is sensitive, someone who loves and understands music, and who is really smart. A lot of times I've ended up with people who have been intimidated by me, unfortunately. They say they're not, but it comes out in the long run. They're threatened, or there's resentment because they don't know how to handle it."

In August 2012, Perry and Mayer seemed like they over as fast as they began. At the time, a source told People, "They weren't serious, but she was really starting to fall for him. She wasn't seeing forever with him, but saw it lasting longer than it did ... Katy likes the 'new' part of a relationship, when everything's exciting and you're getting to know the guy. So she wanted to continue experiencing that with John." Still, the source noted even back then, "There isn't any emotional baggage with them. They may go out again, even, just as friends ... They were honestly having fun. People made it out to be far more than it was."

She told Marie Claire in December 2013 that Mayer is a "fantastic partner" in a "rad, mature relationship," adding of their brief split, "I took a break from my boyfriend, not one that I wanted. It was like a splash of cold water to search inward on what was going on with me ... I still needed to deal with all of my ex-husband stuff. I hadn't. It's almost like if I kept talking about it, it would seem like I actually cared about it. I don't."

In April 2013, a source told People, "Katy would eventually like to settle down again. She is worried about getting older, which sounds ridiculous ... But she does think about the long-term plans of marriage and babies."

Mayer may be trying to rehab his ego addiction, but Perry enables it with quotes like this whopper: She told Billboard in September 2013, "[Mayer] literally is a genius, as is evident from his songwriting. I always tell him, 'Darling, you know I'm going to have to give your mind to science after you've passed, because we're going to have to understand how all these sparks work.' We'll be in bed, and he'll be doing the crossword puzzle. Every night, he tries to finish it in under 10 minutes. When he puts his mind to something, he really gets it done very well. I always ask for his help."

Mayer and Perry collaborated on his hit "Who You Love."

"I had this little chorus for years and it was, 'You love who you love,' and I thought that was always going to be a great thing someday," told Good Morning America in December 2013. "A song that people could hear and feel that sort of permission." When it came to adding Perry onto the vocals, he said, "The very first thought was, 'You can't do that,' and then the more I thought about just the music part of it, it made perfect sense — even if I didn't know Katy, it would have made perfect sense. I went in the other room [of the studio and] called her phone."

Perry chimed in, "Relationships are kind of like riding a bull [in the music video]. You hang on for dear life and sometimes you get a little buck here and there and sometimes you get things thrown at you but you get back on."

Even when they're not singing a duet, Perry and Mayer work well together in terms of inspiring one another's work.

Perry told Entertainment Weekly in October 2013, "I think he's very proud of [Prism]. He's heard it over the process of me making it. I think his opinion is a priority for me, but also me being happy with it is probably a bit more of a priority. And also what the world thinks of it, and how boring would it be if I did censor myself and I wasn't able to write about real-life instances? I mean, that's just not what songwriters do — real songwriters write about their lives."

She also revealed that Mayer inspired her song "Legendary Lovers" during an email exchange in the early stages of their relationship. "I actually wrote it in an email one time, and after I wrote it I looked — we had a long courtship before anything was [public], just writing letters to each other — and seeing 'legendary lovers,' it sounded so nice. Some things float into my mind, and I process them, and [then] I make songs about them."

Perry, similarly, inspired Mayer's 2017 song "Still Feel Like Your Man." He told the New York Times, "Who else would I be thinking about? And by the way, it's a testament to the fact that I have not dated a lot of people in the last five, six years. That was my only relationship. So it's like, give me this, people."

Perry told Rolling Stone in August 2014 that musicians strike a chord with her for a few reasons. "I've [dated non-famous men] before. It's not that they have to be famous, although there's a level of understanding when they're in the same business ... They understand what it means when you're tired from a show or the tour's exhausting you or if an interview went wrong — they know all the ins and outs, so you can just walk into the house with a certain face and they understand, you know? What I really like is someone that understands music, because I love music. So anybody that understands the power of music, I'm usually instantly attracted to."

Insiders told People in March 2014 that her Prismatic World Tour got in the way. "[Perry is] a smart girl," a source said. "She knows no relationship can survive that kind of distance and strain, and she's not going to slow down now when she's at the top of her game." Still, it seemed that Mayer understood completely, telling ABC News in December 2013, "Katy is a superstar for a reason."

Perry, similarly, understood what Mayer needed when he was recovering from vocal cord surgery. "I understood that he couldn't talk, and the only way he could communicate was through an iPad," she said on Ellen DeGeneres (via People) in December 2013. "Some days I have to go on complete vocal rest, like no anything, no whispering. Whispering is actually really bad. There's just a lot of silence in our house most of the time." She added, "We have a lot of fun. You know, we have music as an understanding and love between each other, and we connect, and you know it's like he understands what I do because he does the same thing. And so after a long day, if it's been tough, I don't really have to go into it. He just gets it. You know, so it's nice with that understanding."

Perry and Mayer loathe Taylor Swift almost as much as they love one another, so it's yet one more thing about which the couple can bond.

When Swift wrote "Dear John" about her ill-fated 2010 fling with Mayer, he was hurt, telling Rolling Stone, "It made me feel terrible, because I didn't deserve it. I'm pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that. It was a really lousy thing for her to do. I was really caught off-guard, and it really humiliated me at a time when I'd already been dressed down. I mean, how would you feel if, at the lowest you've ever been, someone kicked you even lower?"

In a 2014 Rolling Stone interview, Swift accused Perry (without saying her name) of "sabotaging a whole arena tour" by "stealing" her backup dancers, though their "Bad Blood" coincidentally seemed to begin after Perry and Mayer started dating.