Jason Mraz “Yes!” Album Review (Video)

By Timothy Yap Jul 10, 2014 03:06 AM EDT

Prime Cuts: Quiet, Best Friend, Love Someone

The appeal to prurience sells. Sex and all its kinkiest permutations are the currency of today's pop music. Regardless of whatever genre you turn to, from rock to pop to country, we are bombarded by songs filled with sexual innuendos. As a result, many of our songs these days are so sensory-based that they are superficially trite. It's a challenge nowadays to find songs that speak of love that transcends the here and now; songs that go naked into the soul; and songs that stay with us after a mere fleeting few months. In fact, you have to harkened back a couple of decades or more to find substantial love songs with lyrics that bear any substantial gravitas. This is why a singer-songwriter like Jason Mraz is such a rare find. Though some critics may trod Mraz as a naviete with a goofball charisma with the kind of love songs he writes, at least Mraz still writes about love with depth and dimension.

Though Jason Mraz released his debut solo album "Waiting for My Rocket to Come" in 2002, he writes with a 70s-styled soul. His quirky ways with his razzle-dazzle words and his grasp of melodies that sticks set him apart, the way Elton John was in the 70s. As a result, one of Mraz most immortal hit is the infectious love song "I'm Yours." The song has such a way of lingering in our psyche that it spent 76 weeks on Billboard's Hot 100, breaking LeAnn Rimes 69 week stay on the same chart with "How Do I Live" in 1998. "Yes!," Mraz's fifth studio album, finds the crooner working with the all female rock group Raining Jane. Produced by Mike Mogis and Mraz, the album was recorded both in Oceanside, CA as well as the more rustic setting of Omaha.

Continuing Mraz's tradition of ear-grabbing love songs is the lead single "Love Someone." Just like "I'm Yours," "Love Someone" trumps on its simplicity. Yet, it's in its simplicity that Mraz captures the flushes of romance so infectiously. "Best Friend" and "Quiet" are two songs you won't hear often on radio today. Instead of just trying to replicate lust on musical notes and words, these two songs speak of love of that glorious kind. It's the type of love that finds solace in each other even if (to quote the words from "Quiet")"empire may rise or fall." Spine chillingly great is "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday:" here Mraz opens with just his voice before he's joined by a chorus of voices bringing out a Gospel hymn-like feel to this song that could even speak of death.

et, not all the songs here are of the same cloth. "Hello, You Beautiful Thing" suffers from too much verbosity. Here the melody just doesn't have the same vacancy as the words allow. "You Can Rely on Me," on the other hand, brims with potential though the melody needs a little more imagination. And "3 Things" is definitely to be faulted for its words; the lyrics sound like the kind of poetry you would come across from a High School English class. Nevertheless, despite such flaws, Mraz is a songwriter to watch. Just like a younger Elton John, this guy writes with such substantial depth that he could easily be the one to save our current crop of pop songs from its superficiality.