LOVE Is A Four Letter Word

I wanted to hold off reviewing Jason Mraz’s new album “LOVE Is A Four Letter Word” until I had listened to it at least a couple of times. Unfortunately, I’m afraid the time spent with the album has made me a bit more critical of it. Let me start by saying that it is an incredibly happy album, and I do like it, quite a lot actually, regardless of what it might seem like at the end of this review. So let’s break it down and see what Mr. A-Z has done right and what he has done wrong.

My first thought about this album is its simplicity. Even the title is like the simplest thing ever, it literally says  how many letters are in the word “LOVE.” It doesn’t say anything about love being good or bad, just that it’s a four-letter word. It’s one of those cute things that’s nice at first look, but when you think about it, it means absolutely nothing. I personally think Jason came up with it one day and just got it stuck in his head so that’s how it ended up as the album title. But the simplicity goes to more than just the title, a fair amount of the music and even lyrics are quite cliché and basic (I’m looking at you “Living In The Moment”). Not to say that it’s a bad song, just that someone who has come up with songs like “On Love, In Sadness” or “A Beautiful Mess” should be writing better songs than this.

The simplicity carries over into the recording of the songs. With the exception of the lush “5/6”, the tight “Frank D. Fixer” and the enveloping “The World As I See It”, there really does not seem to be emotion in these songs. The album feels like Jason went into the studio with some of the chords and the lyrics and had the studio musicians at his disposal finish the songs for him. Never is this more evident than on “The Woman I Love” and “93 Million Miles”, two songs that blew me away when he performed them live, but are thoroughly underwhelming on the studio cuts.

I also worry that the label had a little bit too much input into what songs made the final cut. It seems to me that a few songs, like “Living In The Moment” and “Everything Is Sound” were thrown on to be radio singles, sacrificing the quality of the entire album as a cohesive group of songs. On this same note, I’m glad that “I Won’t Give Up” didn’t lose any of its luster in the studio and that it’s performing well on the radio. But still, I would have much rather seen “You Fckn Did It”, “Rescue” or the hidden track “I’m Coming Over” get the official album treatment.

Jason also pretty recently came off of a bad breakup, so there needs to be those quintessential breakup songs. We get that in the form of “In Your Hands”, Jason’s most cliché and arguably worst song of all time. It’s really disappointing to see such a master of lyricism fall into comparisons of two-seater bikes and the Eiffel tower in a song that should be as emotional as this. Listening to Jason’s forced vocals on this track, one thinks that either he was so hurt by this breakup he can’t stand to sing about it, or that it didn’t hurt nearly enough for him to care. The penultimate track is the lounge feel of “Be Honest.” Again, this is by no means a bad song, but it is one that is easily relegated to the background of cruise ship lounges or beaches.

Just like the album, I want to end on a good, strong note. Easily my favorite song on the album, “The World As I See It” is a gorgeous track that is perfect in essentially everyway. It’s a beautiful song that is simultaneously a world celebrating anthem and a tender love song. “LOVE Is A Four Letter Word” is not a bad moment, and has its moments (“Freedom Song”, “I Won’t Give Up”, “5/6”, “Who’s Thinking About You Now”), but I wish that every song would be at the same caliber of the closing song, “The World As I See It.”