The Sophomore Slump Is an Uphill Battle

Three years ago, Jason Mraz introduced himself to the listening public with his charmingly endearing Waiting for My Rocket to Come. Right from the start, he showed us his offbeat, geeky charisma and won us over with his clever songwriting. As he pointed out on some of the songs off his debut album, "I'm committed to the licks like a nickel bag of tricks" and "it's all about the wordplay ." And it was all true. His geek-chic lyrics appealed to the smart set, while his innumerable pop hooks helped him fit in with the pop/rock crowd.

But success has misled Mraz in the intervening years.

Picture this scenario. Nerdy, goofy high school fringe sceener tutors a handful of the popular crowd kids out with their homework. Although the popular kids would never normally hang out with the nerdy kid, they invite him to one of their parties for a lark. Nerdy kid tells a few offbeat jokes, does a trick or two, and all of a sudden the popular kids let him latch onto them as some sort of wacky sidekick. Nerdy kid gets more than a little full of himself, and starts thinking "if they like me now, they'll love me if I crank up my antics exponentially." Tragedy ensues.

There's more than a few bright spots on Mraz's sophomore album, Mr. A-Z, but they're overshadowed by a host of missteps, most of which stem from Mraz growing a little too full of himself. The album's first single, Wordplay, sums it all up pretty well. The underlying music sounds awfully good, with some solid electrical guitar riffing in the intro and a sharp acoustic rhythm throughout the whole song, although everything does sound a bit over-produced. The big problem is Mraz's sense of self-importance. He actually starts out the song by singing about the trials of the overcoming the sophomore slump before getting to the chorus and singing:

♬ is everybody ready for the single?
and it goes, ha la la la la
now listen closely to the verse I lay
ha la la la la
it's all about the wordplay
ha la la la la
the wonderful thing it does because, because
I am the wizard of ooh's and ah's and fa la la's
yeah the mister A to Z, they say I'm all about the wordplay ♬

Never mind that the whole "wordplay" leitmotif in the lyrics is recycled from his first album. Mraz can talk about his mad wordsmith skills all he wants. When the bulk of the song is just trite, tired rhymes full of puffed-up self-importance, it's easy to roll our eyes at any claims made by the chorus. Add in a reference to his own previous hits ("and it's time to get ill, I got your remedy for those who don't remember me") and Mraz's shtick starts to wear awfully thin.

Mr. A-Z features plenty of big, brash tunes, most of which turn end up as disappointing missteps. Geek in the Pink finds Mraz imitating Maroon 5 with thick R&B rhythms and instrumentation, but he sounds uncomfortable and awkward within the confines of the genre. Add in the song's uncomfortable double entendres:

♬ i don't care what you might think about me
you can vibe without me if you want
i could be the one to take you home
baby I could rock the night alone
if we never get down it wouldn't be a let down
...
oh take it from a geek like me
i can save you from unoriginal dum-dums
who wouldn't care if you cum...plete him or not ♬

and the song just gets far too weird and creepy.

On Did You Get My Message, Mraz delves into the realm of crossed wires and missed messages set to a barroom piano blues beat played on an electronic keyboard, rather than an actual piano as the song demands. O. Lover shows some of Mraz's more awkward attempts at seduction ("you are the sweetest thing I've found since whenever"), but the song is drowned out by too much percussion for us to notice anyway. The musical arrangements on Forecast take us into some jazz territory with the rich piano chords and the complex percussion rhythms, but the vocals feel flat and out of place, almost like Mraz is lost in the desert without a map, making us wish for someone like Jamie Cullum who knows how to do jazz-pop right. Most of the remaining songs are pleasant enough sounding pieces of modern adult pop, but they all fall under the lyrical shadow of how much Mraz loves the ladies and how much he loves himself.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Mr. A-Z are the occasional sparks of brilliance that rise up to the surface. Despite some heavy-handed post production, the arrangements are rich and varied. The musicianship amongst the backing lines and solos range from solid to sublime. And then there's Life is Wonderful, the album's opening track. The song is sweetly subtle in the way it build from a soft acoustic ballad to a folksy collage of bongos, strings, and guitar, to solid wall of overpowering, wistful pop. It proves that deep down, Mraz does have a deep, pensive side to his lyrical skills, starting off with the introspectively philosophical lines:

♬ it takes a crane to build a crane, it takes two floors to make a story
it takes an egg to make a hen, it takes a hen to make an egg
there is no end to what I'm saying
it takes a thought to make a word, and it takes a word to make an action
it takes some work to make it work, it takes some good to make it hurt
it takes some bad for satisfaction

It's easily the album's finest moment, and several more like it would have made for a solid collection of songs, but by it's not nearly enough to carry the whole album by itself.

I might have been a bit more forgiving to Mr. A-Z had Waiting for My Rocket to Come not been such an enjoyable album. His debut wasn't without its flaws, but it feels like everything that was original and endearing about that album has been swept aside, leaving only the flaws in the spotlight. I've no doubt that Mraz has another great album in him (hopefully several of them), but he'll have to learn to get over himself before he can really connect with us once again.