“I Won't Give Up” by Jason Mraz

"I Won't Give Up" came out on Atlantic Records as the first official single from Love Is a Four Letter Word, Jason Mraz's fourth album, released in 2012. He wrote it with Michael Natter during a stretch of activist outings, and it's a bare-hearted acoustic ballad, half folk-pop and half folk blues, about refusing to quit: on the person you love, on yourself, on your dreams.

Joe Chiccarelli produced it. Mraz plays acoustic guitar, with Tim Pierce on guitar, Jeff Babko on keyboards, Paul Bushnell on bass and Matt Chamberlin on drums, while Amy Keys, Arnold McCuller, Valerie Pinkston and Toca Rivera sing backup, and Tony Maserati mixed it. Critics mostly warmed to how plain-spoken and emotional it was, and it entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 8, his second top-ten hit after "I'm Yours".

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