This album is pure fun. Pure sunshine, and takes me back to my teenage years when this album came out. When this album came out I had recieved my first ever computer to call my own, met my first true teenage love and found this wonderful service called YouTube.

I came to this album like many through the popular track, “I’m Yours” a fantastic soppy love song. But I did not find the original first, no instead I was hooked on watching a cover on YouTube over-and-over again. As always one thing led to another and I came to this album, and it was great.

The thing about this album is that I /should/ hate it – its generic, it doesn’t break any new ground but its just unhateable. I was a Jack Johnson super fan at the time that I discovered this album, and that most likely played a big part as I was a big lover (and still am to some effect) of acoustic pop. So much so that two other artists who I thoroughly enjoyed at the time also appear on this album – Jack Morrison and Colbie Caillat.

This album bounces from track to track with extremely light and happy melodies however some tracks lyrics move towards more serious and troublesome themes – namely the track “Love For A Child”. I love this track, most probably because it tells a story and I love story songs, but it just has this wonderful bittersweetness to it. Another track that I thoroughly enjoy is Coyotes, it has this brooding emotion about it that I find difficult to explain. Of course set up against any other “menacing” track that I came to discover later in my music life, this track falls flat and sounds like any other pop song, but against the backdrop of the happy-go-lucky tracks presented this song punches hard.

But with my rose-tinted glasses off for a moment, disconnecting myself from the sentimental properties of this album – would I enjoy it if it came out today? Unlikely, I don’t think I would vehemently hate it – but if you explained to me that it was just white guy rapping with an acoustic guitar I’d be rather unimpressed and would go back to listening to my main course of hip-hop and tragic indie tracks.

However this isn’t the case, this album just makes me happy – almost to the point of breaking face and wanting to dance around and be cheerful. I can happily listen to all 50 minutes of this release without much complaint, seldom reaching for the next track button. Do I listen to anything else Mraz has put out? Nope. Do I intend to? Unlikely

I don’t want to ruin what this mostly inconspicuous pop album means to me.

Also, Mraz looks terribly similar to someone I know from my hometown – spooky.