In the Blood

In the Blood is a series of rhetorical questions. Each one more and more desperate sounding, leading up to the last question: "Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?". What exactly will wash out isn't explicitly defined, but the question makes it clear it feels very much a part of him — "in the blood". The slow, gradual drag of the song makes John Mayer sound resistant and a little frustrated to whatever change isn't coming to pass. Perhaps he purports, it's because it is in his DNA or from his family ("How much of my mother has my mother left in me?", "How much of my father am I destined to become?").

The chorus finally starts answering some of his questions, only to turn around and ask more:

I can feel the love I want
I can feel the love I need
But it's never gonna come the way I am
Could I change it if I wanted?
Can I rise above the flood?
Will it wash out in the water
Or is it always in the blood?

He never sounds definitive, but the march of the of the guitar is steady giving a stronger sense of assuredness. The final 30 seconds of the song sound the happiest, but which way the knife falls is still unclear. Is whatever "it" is, something that will wash out, or not?