It’s appropriate that Jason Mraz’s first break came at a skating rink. He’d recorded his debut song, sent his demo to the ice rink bosses and it was played to an oblivious crowd of lovers holding hands and skating in circles in his home town of Mechanicsville, Virginia. That may seem mushy but that’s exactly why we think it’s appropriate. Mraz is all about trembling, soppy love, with romantic lullabies that tug at the heartstrings in his folk-blues style – perfect for romantic freewheeling on the ice.

From the outset, Mraz’s albums have always been ‘heart-on-his-sleeve’. His 2002 breakthrough debut, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, was very much about him waiting for, well, his rocket to come. And while he had spurts of success with The Remedy (I Won’t Worry), Wordplay and You and I Both, it wasn’t until his 2008 single, I’m Yours, that said rocket really propelled Mraz to the heights of being the template for every guitar-slinging, ballad-serenading, hat-wearing singer-songwriter.

The I’m Yours megahit landed in 2008, bundled in his third studio album, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things, and, since then, a growing chorus of Mraz-wannabees and swooning girls have been waiting for his follow-up. So it was with a collective gasp that, in April, Love is a Four Letter Word landed, opening with the line ‘I picture something, it’s beautiful/ It’s full of life and it is all blue’. Yes, you know what you’re getting with Jason Mraz – positive, love-centric folk that stays very true to the formula. He’s already taken the rocket to stardom – now he just has to float there on his tunes.

Byron Tseng 

Jason Mraz plays AsiaWorld Arena on Sun Jun 24. Tickets: 3128 8288; www.hkticketing.com.