Now 46, multi-Grammy Award-winner Jason Mraz was born in 1977 — the same year Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Jerry Lee Lewis, then 42, released his melancholic country-music single “Middle Age Crazy.”
Almost no one listening to Mraz’s often buoyant new album, “Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride,” will be reminded of Lewis belting out such high-octane 1950s rock classics as “Great Balls of Fire” and “High School Confidential.” But there are clear thematic similarities between some of Mraz’s musically upbeat new album and the downbeat “Middle Age Crazy,” on which the now-deceased Lewis reflected: And today he’s forty years old, going on twenty / Don’t look for the gray in his hair / ‘Cause he ain’t got any.
“I thought I’d be done at 40,” said Mraz, who — six years later — has responded to middle-age with a surprise left turn.
