And a newer artist, John Mayer, seeks redemption...

Across four hectic days this month, as Mr. Mayer, lucid and optimistic, finished his big-budget new album, “The Search for Everything,” and filmed a music video for what he hopes will be his next hit single, he seemed to especially relish reflecting on his 2010 undoing. Recalling the consequences of those infamous magazine articles — in which he used the phrase “sexual napalm,” chronicled his onanism in horrific detail, referred to his male anatomy as David Duke and somehow separately used a racial epithet — Mr. Mayer was vivid and virtuosic in his self-laceration.