Album review: “Know” by Jason Mraz

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photo courtesy of Atlantic Records Press

Jason Mraz’s new album “Know” features 10 new songs, not all of them worth a listen.

Sabrina Bramson, Features Editor

Jason Mraz recently released his new album titled “Know” on August 10. Leading up to this date, however, he released four singles that would be part of the album. The second song, “Unlonely,” was dropped on June 14, right at the beginning of the summer.

“Unlonely” starts out with Mraz singing in a high voice range falsetto with some drums and guitar playing in the background., creating a laid-back feel to the song. It then transitions into Mraz half-singing half-talking, and then back into the falsetto chorus that was sung at the beginning.

As much as I like some of Mraz’s music, this song specifically is kind of annoying and isn’t very enjoyable. Although the backtrack is relaxing and nice to listen to, I don’t like the somewhat-rapped verses and the chorus is not particularly strong. Although the back track is relaxing and easy to listen to without the lyrics, “Unlonely” was overall disappointing.

One of the songs released with the whole album,“Better With You,”  true to its name, is frankly much better. The lyrics are very sweet, even though there aren’t many of them. Instead of rapping, though Mraz chooses to whisper his song, which does not enhance the song at all. I enjoyed the upbeat energy of the song and it is very catchy. It is slightly too repetitive, but nonetheless better than “Unlonely.”

Mraz’s albums tend to be very simple and calming with a couple stand-out songs. In this case, much of the album was lackluster. The only song that stood out to me was “Have It All.”

“Have It All” is a great combination. Not only is it catchy and upbeat, but the song still follows Mraz’s very well-known laid-back manner, which matches the rest of the album. For some reason, all of these factors come together with the lyrics to be more likeable than the previous two songs mentioned.

As a whole, I would not recommend “Know” as an album, because be blunt, it was kind of boring and lacked something special. I would, however, recommend listening to “Have It All,” an incredible song with a very sweet message behind it.