| Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020 | ![]() |
Jason Mraz & Jack JohnsonInterest forums / Culture Vultures | ||
It was sure nice of Jack Johnson to write those songs for Jason Mraz, and to clearly advise him that copying the Jack Johnson singing style was also a good idea. | ||
cant stand jack johnson | 1 | |
That's because his third album WAS the theme music to toddlers cartoons. | 2 | |
I knew that | 3 | |
they do sound very similar.... | 4 | |
But then, it sure was nice of Ben Harper to hand over a sort of watered-down, infinitely more flimsy and gutless version of the mellower side of his+ style to Jack Johnson - and even to help out by playing slide guitar on Jack's first album, and letting Jack play support slots at some of his shows, back in the days before some record company marketing guy decided that ultra-bland rhyming nonsense from the North Shore was "the soundtrack to +your summer"... Once upon a time - well, in the year 2000 actually - I saw Jack Johnson and his oh-so-bohemian friends sitting around a fire on the beach at Pipeline, Oahu, in front of his dad's beachfront house, playing his guitar and being all chilled out and hippyish... | 5 | |
Not a Jack Johnson fan then, Timdog? Remember, you write from the perspective of a world travelling nomadic surfer dude, not a chained down 9-5 mortgage slave like me! My original post was understated (I am Australian after all). Whether or not you like him (JJ), I care not. That said, Jason Mraz is flat out copying Johnson even to the point of vocal inflection. Sure Ben Harper helped Johnson, but Johnson was already writing his own music as soundtracks to his music before Harper came along. And, the slide interlude by Harper on the song Flake is cool, but totally different to the rest of the album(s). I'm not always in the mood for mellow by any means- I'm also a big metal fan- but I loved Jack's first two albums. The next two are sameish no question, and his musical ride may soon be over I think. | 6 | |
I meant soundtracks to his movies, not music, by the way! | 7 | |
Well... I'll grudgingly admit that I did rather like the first two albums, but then Curious George came out and the balance swung rapidly in the other direction. And when I heard the track "banana pancakes" for some reason it prompted an uncharacteristic urge to do physical violence to the person who had created it... I've never really been able to listen to Jack Johnson since... You're absolutely right about Jason Mraz - that's one of the reasons I wish JJ never left his Hawaiian campfire: the imitators he's spawned. Jack Johnson is light and flimsy enough himself, so the Jack-lite imitators are thinner than air, and curiously offensive by way of their very blandness... | 8 | |
Presumably, Jack Johnson is also aware of The Beautiful Girls | 9 | |
Don't even get me started on Jackoff Johnson | 10 | |
We just did... Now, spill! | 11 | |