Jason Mraz

Jason Mraz is the singer-songwriter and guitarist from Mechanicsville, born in 1977, who made scat-happy, wordplay-drunk pop into a genuine career. His debut album, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, arrived in 2002 carrying "The Remedy (I Won't Worry)", a breezy, finger-snapping shrug of a song that took him onto the Hot 100. Mr. A-Z followed in 2005 and went top five on the Billboard 200.

His trick is a voice that skips and slides like a jazz cat's, wrapped around a grab bag of styles: pop rock, reggae lilt, a little funk and blue-eyed soul, strummed on guitar or ukulele. The approach paid off big with "I'm Yours", a sunny, laid-back reggae-pop strum that hung around the Hot 100 for 76 weeks, a record at the time, and went diamond. Its album, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., went four times platinum in 2008, and its singles "Make It Mine" and "Lucky", a duet with Colbie Caillat, brought him 2 Grammys.

Love Is a Four Letter Word, in 2012, went to number two on the Billboard 200 and delivered "I Won't Give Up", a slow, tender ballad that became his second top-10 Hot 100 hit. Albums have kept coming since, and he has also been honored by the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.