It's been nearly two years since John Mayer has released a new single and the accompanying music video. That's long enough for the musician, now 34, to grow out his hair, switch the pretty boy look for a rugged Western persona and go on a road trip across America.

At least, that's what Mayer does in the music video for his new single, Shadow Days, the first track off his fifth studio album, Born and Raised.

Between the scenic, postcard shots of America and the great driving road, Mayer delivers the song's lyrics, line by line. Sort of.

As fans have long known, Mayer has been battling a granuloma condition since October, when he first had throat surgery. After months of rest and announcement for a spring tour in support of Born and Raised, Mayer confirmed that the throat condition had returned.

I have no idea how to introduce this post, so I'm skipping the first paragraph. During rehearsal on Tuesday, it came to mind that I should see my throat doctor because something didn't feel/sound right. I went in for a visit on Wednesday and a scope of my vocal cords revealed that the granuloma has grown back where it had mostly healed, he wrote on Tumblr in early March.

A granuloma forms and continues to snowball because it's in a spot where the vocal cords hit together and there's no way to really give it a chance to heal without a good stretch of time and some pretty intensive treatment. In short, it's one giant pain in the a**, he wrote.

In the meantime, Mayer has been busy on Tumblr, posting photos from the Shadow Days music video set, covering Lana Del Rey and still gearing up for the release of Born and Raised, which is sticking to its original drop date of May 22.

Born and Raised is the follow-up to Mayer's fourth studio album, Battle Studies, which sold just under 1 million copies in the US during its 2009 release. To date, Mayer's most successful album remains his debut, Room for Squares, with more than 4.3 million copies sold in the US.

Scroll down to watch John Mayer's Shadow Days, courtesy of Columbia Records and John Mayer on VEVO.

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