Paradise

The Paradise Suite is a story about six people finding each other and, sometimes with just one glance, influencing each other's lives irreversibly. For the beautiful young Bulgarian Jenya, her journey to Amsterdam turns out to be the opposite of what she hoped for. Her grueling captivity forces the angelic African, Yaya, to fight for her freedom - a dangerous fight in which he loses everything but his beloved faith. The Serbian war criminal Ivica, who has just become a father, is painfully confronted with the fact that crimes will never go unpunished. Bosnian Seka has nothing left to live for except her vengeance but as it turns out, it's that same vengeance that brings love back in her life. And when the Swedish piano-wonder boy, Lukas, runs away from his new temporary home, his father Stig finally realizes that their mutual passion for music damages their relationship.

John Mayer's 2013 album, the Americana-tinged Paradise Valley, is an introspective if somewhat more upbeat affair than his similarly country-inflected 2012 release, Born and Raised. With that album, Mayer was coming off a rough career patch that found him issuing a mea culpa for an infamously loose-lipped 2010 Rolling Stone interview. Making matters worse, in 2011 the singer/songwriter announced he would be going on extended hiatus from performing while he received treatment for granulomas found near his vocal cords. Subsequently, with Born and Raised, Mayer moved away from the commercial pop of 2010's Battle Studies and toward an intimate, largely acoustic, '70s Laurel Canyon-inspired sound with songs that featured plenty of apologetic soul-searching.