Jason Mraz Talks New Album & The Advice He’d Give His Younger Self – Billboard

Jason Mraz has been making music for greater than 20 years, however he’s solely simply made his first pop album.

On June 23, the singer/songwriter launched his newest album, Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride, a 10-track assortment that incorporates a few of the dance-iest and most pop-forward songs of Mraz’s profession whereas nonetheless asking the deep questions which have been a via line in all of his output.

Mraz lately stopped by the Billboard News studio to unpack a few of the tales behind the album, together with the way it took heavy affect from none aside from his mother.

Upon telling his mother the concepts he was contemplating exploring on his subsequent mission, Mraz remembers, “She mentioned, ‘These are great, but I feel like you’ve performed this earlier than.’ She mentioned, ‘What you need to do is make a pop album before it’s too late.’

“Those words ‘before it’s too late’ reverberated around the room,” Mraz continues, “and I thought… am I too old to make upbeat music?’ So I wanted to challenge myself and my bandmates; we all challenged each other to make this album you could dance to.”

But Mraz, who turned 46 on the day of the brand new album’s launch, needed to make dance music for folks his age, which induced him to strategy the themes of the album from a unique perspective than these in a number of mainstream pop.

“Historically, had I been doing this at a younger age, I would have been hormonally charged to try to create these dancefloor bangers,” he says, “but as you get older those moments are still precious, but it’s not what all of life is about. Sometimes life is about cheering yourself on to get through the day.”

Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical is Mraz’s eighth studio LP and comes 21 years after his first album, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, which produced breakout hits together with “The Remedy (I Won’t Worry)” and “You and I Both.”

“I think back then, it’s all I knew so I felt both like a winner, but I felt a little unworthy,” Mraz says of the starting-out days. “I felt like I used to be thrown into it too quickly. I wasn’t absolutely realized in life and I used to be 23, 24, so I’m writing songs which are extra for that age. Looking for love in all of the mistaken locations, I suppose, however nonetheless asking questions on why am I right here and what’s the that means of life. I feel that’s the via line.

Mraz says the recommendation he’d give to this youthful model of himself is fairly easy: “Just relax, you don’t need the tramp stamp, you can quit smoking sooner than you think, it’s gonna be OK. I was junk food and cigarettes and beer, and I was everything, every night. That’s who I was back then. I felt like I was indestructible. I wouldn’t really wake up from that for many years, probably 2007 is when I had a big transformation in my life, so that first album is a distant memory, but a joyful one.”