The fruit of love

Over the past few months, Jason Mraz has become one of my favorite musical artists. I love discovering new musicians, but Mraz is something special and has shot straight to the top of my list. I was introduced to him early last year by an amazing young lady who, unfortunately, seems to think quite the opposite of me. At the time I didn't realize how amazing he was, probably in part due to the fact that she introduced me to him on some pretty lousy sounding laptop speakers (how a professional musician can bear to listen to music on those tone-butchering speakers is quite beyond me).

One of my favorite songs by Jason (I really want to call him JM, but another excellent musician has aleady claimed those initials) is called Wordplay. The song is very clever - just trying to sing along with the song can be quite challening. In the second verse, he employs a pretty neat little trick I first learned about relative to the radio. See, good radio talk show hosts realize the power of silence. Sometimes, before they are about to say something important or that they want to make sure their audience hears, especially after a long monologue, they will pause. The pause might last 2-3 seconds or more, which seems like an eternity on the radio. But it is so powerful because, after the pause, the next thing they say stands out in contrast to the silence. If you are listening to the radio in the background, the sound after the pause will often suddenly catch your attention.

So in this song Wordplay, Jason sings "Gotta find another way to keep from goin' under /
Pull out the stops / [PAUSE] / Got your attention". What I really like about this is how he works in the dynamic of the pause into the lyrics themselves. He sings "stops" and then the music literally stops for an instant. After the pause, the next line is "got your attention." He is capturing your attention by stopping and then resuming, and in the very words he sings next he is pointing out he does in fact have your attention again. You probably need to listen to the song (around 1:30) to really appreciate it, but I think it's actually pretty clever.

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Now playing: Jason Mraz - Wordplay
via FoxyTunes   

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.