How many guitarists can make you cry with no words spoken? Tommy Emmanuel’s heartbreaking guitar playing on John Mayer’s breakup anthem “Slow Dancing In A Burning Room” shows a genius beyond compare. The Aussie guitar virtuoso teamed up with Mike Dawes, performing an instrumental acoustic duet on the song, stripping back the original full-band arrangement to the essentials. Mike delivers the main melody and rhythm of the song, while Tommy provides emotive and expressive improvisations over the top.
Tommy’s playing is so creative, and you can really see how he has complete control over anything he does on the instrument. All the more impressive is the fact that he doesn’t use his skill to overplay – he adds exactly what’s needed to make the ballad hit right in the chest. The Music Man has to say that absolutely nobody does it like Tommy Emmanuel!
Music YouTuber Rick Beato filmed the duet during his interview with Tommy. He then uploaded it to his second channel, Rick Beato 2, where it hit three million views. Fans added comments like “John Mayer must be in heaven hearing and seeing this” and “Every time I hear this, I wanna cry and it reminds me how much I still have to learn. This is a masterpiece, thank you.” Viewers also couldn’t believe that Tommy could conjure such compelling parts while improvising on the spot.
One of Tommy’s signature songs is his solo acoustic guitar rendition of Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas.” His blistering one-take cut of the song in the studio proved to be his most popular performance on YouTube, where it drew 29 million views. It’s just mind-blowing watching Tommy at work on his Maton – he does things I didn’t even know were possible on acoustic guitar.
John Mayer issued “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” as the eighth track from his third studio album Continuum. John is the sole credited songwriter, and he produced the song with Steve Jordan. The Music Man readers might be interested to hear that although “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” was not issued as a single, it is considered by many to be one of John’s most essential tracks. Billboard named it as his best song, while Marie Claire listed it as his second-best. The popularity of “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” is attested to by the fact that it has been certified Platinum in the US, Gold in Denmark, and Silver in the UK. Quite the impressive feat for a song never released as a single! The tune hit these milestones via digital sales and streaming figures.