Jason Mraz's "I Won't Give Up": Why This Song Sucks

[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.]

Song: “I Won't Give Up” is the first single from Jason Mraz's upcoming album. No title has been released for the album yet. Nobody at his label could think of one because they all kept falling asleep when he played this song, probably. (Correction: It does have a title, Love Is A Four Letter Word.)

History: Mraz used to be quirky and likeable and all of his pro-Earth idiosyncrasies were charming, but then he got really famous and, ugh, enough already. We get it. You recycle, Jason. And everyone that doesn't is an asshole. Thanks.

Atmospherics: It's like if someone took Damien Rice's “Delicate” and said, “Hey, you know what might be cool? If I took this and kind of tried to turn this into a country song.” Gross. Combining two things tangentially similar like that never works. Oh, except for Dinocroc. Dinocroc worked like gangbusters. I mean, he feeds on fear, bro. FEAR. He's like Freddy Kreuger, except he can get you when you're awake too. That's terrifying.

…Fuck, my fear just fed him again. He's getting stronger. That's terrifying too.

…OHFUCKIDIDITAGAIN!!! DINOCROC WILL NEVER DIE!!! Scientific Analysis:Analyzing this song proved to be more tedious than any others featured in this space. Not because it's good, because it's not. But because, Christ, man, this is the most boring thing of all. It's the actualization of absence; it's essence scraped from the innards of cosmic nothingness.

A closer examination of black holes makes for a startling mrealization

Remember that movie Event Horizon, the one where the spaceship travels through a black hole and then everyone goes crazy? This is like a tiny bit of that. There are no rules. Look what happened when I tried to create a flow chart for “I Won't Give Up”:

Who even knows?

See, it started out well enough, but it completely unraveled by the end. What was supposed to be a scientific examination of linguistics became a picture of a mouse wondering where he can get some cheese and a picture of what I think He-Man maybe looked like.

I played this song 11 times in a row trying to understand it. You know what I learned? Nothing. I just became the asshole who played Jason Mraz's “I Won't Give Up” eleven times at Starbucks.

There's nothing to see here, guys. Move along.

Conclusions:

(I) Dinocrocs will soon rule this world.

(II) He-Man is hard to draw.

(III) Jason Mraz exists inside of black holes.

(IV) Starbucks has free wi-fi.

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