John Mayer wants to remind you he isn't a "d*ck" anymore. But he knows why he was.

When most of us think about John Mayer, a strong stereotype comes to mind.

He’s a bit of a ‘ladies’ man’. A bit of a player. And, in his own words, a bit of a “d*ck”.

This reputation probably started with his quick succession of celebrity relationships – including Jessica Simpson, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Aniston, Taylor Swift, Renee Zellweger and Katy Perry. Then, in 2010, the singer gave two interviews, one to Rolling Stone and one to Playboy, that were… messy.

He called his penis a “white supremacist” (… what), spoke explicitly about porn, admitting “there have probably been days when I saw 300 vaginas before I got out of bed,” and said that he wanted in a partner, a vagina “you could pitch a tent on and just camp out on for, like, a weekend”.

Speaking about Jessica Simpson, he said “that girl is like crack cocaine to me”.

“Sexually it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm. Did you ever say, ‘I want to quit my life and just f***ing snort you? If you charged me $10,000 to f**k you, I would start selling all my s**t just to keep f***ing you.'”

Cool.

❄️????feeeelin’ it????❄️

A post shared by John Mayer ???? (@johnmayer) on Dec 20, 2017 at 3:42pm PST

Anyway, in a recent interview with Billboard, the 41-year-old says he isn’t who he used to be. In short, he’s not a “d*ck”.

“Some people still say, ‘That guy’s a d**k,’” he told the publication. “And I go, ‘Well, any of that data you’re working off of is really old.’ I mean, I can tell you for sure that I haven’t been a d**k in many years. That’s a really outdated take.”

Mayer said the reason for his controversial behaviour could probably be put down to the fact he “wasn’t aware that there was anything I couldn’t have”.

Fame, he said, and the status that came with it, “made a monster out of me”.

“There’s something very freeing about ‘You can’t’,” he said. “And that’s about the right age in your life where you go, ‘Yeah, you can’t’.”

In 2012, two years after his controversial interviews, Mayer bought a house in Montana, and has since released two albums.

Perhaps a focus on music, and not… genitals, is for the best.