The Singles Jukebox

Sadly, Jason only received 37.5% of it all…

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[3.75]

Juan F. Carruyo: 10 years removed from über hit “I’m Yours,” Mraz attacks with another extra-positive, happy-go-lucky Hallmark card of a song. May he skank on this lightly forever. 
[5]

Alex Clifton: Here’s a thing you need to know about me: Between the ages of 13 and 21, I was a Jason Mraz stan. He’s one of the reasons I got into music; I doodled all his lyrics on my folders, contributed to Mraz fansites, saved up my money to buy all his albums, downloaded concert and live bootlegs of his stuff because it always sounded better live, and was over the moon when “I’m Yours” was picked to back my senior year Homecoming dance. I couldn’t figure out why my friends found him irritating when I was in high school, but after a string of bad Mraz impersonators (looking squarely at you, Ed Sheeran) I could suddenly understand. It didn’t help with the uber-hippie heel-turn of 2014’s Yes! where he went full-on avocado farmer, literally singing about gardening while scatting. But I always loved Jason for his positivity and relentless optimism, his determination to give you a burst of sunshine with his music, no matter how corny it might be. “Have It All” is basically “I’m Yours” but less a love song and more a blessing of success to the listener, and it’s kind of twee and shiny and very, very silly. I’ve also kept returning to it and humming the chorus on days when I feel sad. The world is dark enough as it is and only gets darker; in a recent interview, Mraz talked about how he wants to “be a reminder that everything’s okay.” Everything isn’t okay, but for three minutes I feel like I have reason enough to hope again. And that’s good enough for me.
[6]

Will Adams: Really, the only thing separating me from enjoying Jason Mraz and his carefree, white guy-does-slam-poetry schtick is the absence of cod-reggae. But “I’m Yours” was the big hit, so here we are. “Have It All” seems tired of the routine; by the second verse, he’s leaning so far into corniness that he crosses over into absurdity (“may you be as fascinating as a slap bracelet”). Self-aware lines like that keep this from being fully excruciating, but the more Mraz does these kind of songs, the more he sounds like the royalty-free music YouTubers use for their daily vlogs.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Christ, he’s still putting ukelele on his records?!
[1]

Iain Mew: I’m surprised to like something which sounds like the extrapolation of a line drawn from “Where is the Love?” through “Price Tag,” but it overcomes that through the rare generosity right through it. There’s few songs that take a message like “I want you to have it all” and are this convincing that the I isn’t the important one there. It’s nice that generosity extends to keeping a flow of different happy bubbles of sound, too.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: We’re in another music-industry bubble, it seems — now Jason Mraz’s been commissioned to remake Natalie Imbruglia’s “Want” for a Sweetgreen tie-in! But in all seriousness: what the hell is this? If it’s the “inspired-by-a-Buddhist-greeting” whatevercraft he says it is, what’s with the “It’s a Beautiful Day“/”Love Yourself”-esque “here’s to the fact that I’ll be sad without you”? If it is a breakup song, why do half the lyrics sound like they’re directed at someone graduating high school? If it is a graduation song, then why — and so on; you could spend days at this, trying to guess whether this suspiciously beaming grin conceals bitterness or nothing.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Even worse with impressing the audience with polysyllabic words than a college freshman.
[1]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This sounds like if Lin-Manuel Miranda made children’s music, and it’s surprisingly tolerable in spite of that.
[4]