Jason Mraz has a new album that is coming out and he wants everyone to love and buy it, but listen to this: he isn’t making a dime off of it.
The two-time Grammy-winner has promised to donate all the earnings from sales and streams off his new reggae album Look for the Good, which includes his $250,000 advance, to groups working for racial equality and justice.
Mraz tells The Associated Press from his home in So. California, “This is bigger than me, now the CD itself has a purpose. The record itself actually can go out and serve.”
All sales will fund Black Lives Matter, San Diego Young Artists Music Academy, RISE San Diego, Grassroots Law Project, Center on Policy Initiatives and Equal Justice Initiative.
He says, “for me, this is my cardboard sign up at the march. This is me putting my body and my music and my name on the line to say ‘I stand with this movement and I want to help move this down the field towards a more equal and just world,”
Look for the Good will be released Friday (June 19), which also is Juneteenth, a celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. Mraz vows to make donations to progressive groups annually on Juneteenth. “I’ve made plenty of quiet donations and that’s great. But I also want to inspire other leaders in business and other leaders in music to do the same,” he said.
The 12-track album was recorded last summer but finds itself quite prescient, with uplifting messages of togetherness and unity. “Something about reggae says, ‘You’re welcome here’ or ‘This is for everybody,’” Mraz said.
The album includes the song “You Do You,” a collaboration with actress Tiffany Haddish, who raps the line “We gonna march until our voices get heard.” In another song, Mraz sings: “We were born to love not hate/We can decide our fate.”
The roots of the album go back to the year Donald Trump won the White House and took on more importance with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month. “For me, it started with the 2016 election and feeling like such a shift and a loss of power and a rise of a sort of ugliness that still exists in the U.S.” he said. “2020 is election year, so that’s really what prompted us to be like, ’Hey, 2020 is going to be an engaged year. There’s going to be debate.
Things are going to happen. Who knows what. But what we need is to be prepared with some positive music.”
Mraz is best known for his 2008 hit “I’m Yours,” which got to No. 6 in 2008. His other hits include “Lucky” with Colbie Caillat, “I Won’t Give Up” and “The Remedy (I Won’t Worry).”
Mraz joked that donating all profits from “Look for the Good” makes sense for him since he’s a Sen. Bernie Sanders fan and a democratic socialist. “What good socialist would I be if I didn’t share my earnings to some degree?” he said. “I’ve been very blessed. I’ve had a lot of great albums. I’ve had a lot of success. I’m in a privileged position where I can do this and I can help. So it feels good. Feels like the right thing to do.”
