Sad Mraz

I woke up this morning in a strange sense of disarray. A song had noodled its way into my brain - a song I had not heard in years. I leaned across my bathroom counter trying to remember it before the moment passed, hesitating to start brushing my teeth lest I lose it.

At first I could make out the word "absolutely." I knew it was slow, and beautiful. Zero. Absolutely Zero. Oh my blobinthesky, I had vintage Jason Mraz in my head!

I'm not sure how he got there. After all, I've been trying to forget about him for years. Jason Mraz went from a sad sack with the most beautiful songs of heartbreak to the most irritating ukulele-toting fedora-wearing man in the history of pop music. And all of this happened within the course of a few short years. Waiting for my Rocket to Come, the 2002 masterpiece, slowly disintegrated into 2005's mediocre Mr. A-Z, a sub-par effort where Mr. Mraz went from Awesome to a little too Zany. Then came 2008's We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. where the only track worth listening was track 7. It was a sad sack song. And I can't even remember its name.

And that's when he brought out his ukulele. The worst use of ukulele known to mankind.

Back to Waiting for my Rocket to Come. These songs are precious raindrops and morning dew. They are sensitive, and gentle, and everything great about waking up on a fresh morning. "Who Needs Shelter" has the sweetest sort of guitar plucking, while "The Boy's Gone" has a steady pace of contemplative lyrics and a simple-but-catchy guitar riff. "Absolutely Zero" is full of break-up sadness, enough emotion to somehow bury itself in the depths of my brain, only to emerge 9 years after I first heard it.

Sad Mraz, come back. You may have been miserable, and I may have been naive, but life was simpler back then.