John Mayer On His Love For Taylor Swift & Giving Kanye West A Break

Taylor Swift, John Mayer, Kanye West Getty ImagesAccess Hollywood

NEW YORK, New York -- John Mayer may be known for being a joker, but there's nothing funny about his admiration for Taylor Swift.

"There's something about Taylor that she would have been a star in any decade," John told Access Hollywood's Maria Menounos of the 19-year-old country-pop crossover sensation. "Taylor's like this fresh voice."

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The two collaborated on "Half of My Heart," off his new album, "Battle Studies," and although he shared credit with the teen, he couldn't be more pleased.

"I don't normally make records to share tracks with people. I've never had somebody's name underneath the title of my song and I couldn't be happier that she's on there," John told Maria. "I consider her a friend. I think she's a really remarkable person and it'll be nice to have her name on the record for the rest of my life."

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John smiled when speaking about the teen singer, who recently cleaned up at the CMA Awards, netting four honors including the highly coveted Entertainer of the Year award.

"Taylor Swift is the last person to know she's Taylor Swift, which I think is totally sweet," John told Maria of the young woman's wonderment with life and the accolades that have come her way because of her big talent. "It's almost like Taylor Swift is like a character in a movie about a small town girl who has her dreams come true and what any small time girl would do when their dreams come true is to freak out.

"I still like it that she freaks out, but pretty soon she's gonna have to stop because it's sort of like, 'You're that good. You're that good. You might have to go to therapy and have someone else tell you you're that good,'" John smiled. "So it's great to have someone who's hugely talented and still is able to receive the pleasure in all moments."

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But while John is a big fan of Taylor, he has a lot of sympathy for her MTV Video Music Awards stage invader, Kanye West.

"Here's how we work in America: We raise them and then we drop them, we raise them and we drop them so it went like this, 'That was messed up Kanye! You deserve a punishment.' Then all of a sudden the punishment got so severe I was like, 'Time out!'" John explained. "If you just woke up now and you looked at the backlash on Kanye you'd think that he actually firebombed the stage.

"It's the MTV Video Music Awards," John continued. "It's not the G8 summit. Kanye West got in more trouble than the guy who yelled, 'You lie!' to the President. The guy who yelled 'You lie!' in the middle of Congress got like a two-day slap on the wrist and Kanye West -- his entire career is in escrow because he jumped on stage at the Video Music Awards."

And John added that he believes the hip-hop star has learned from the incident.

"I think he's remorseful," John said of Kanye. "I think this guy's got to be reconsidering how he's gonna act, and that's fine. We learn from our little mistakes that happen in public. I've taken my little prat falls... and you pick yourself up."

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