Jason Mraz‘s latest hit, “I Feel Like Dancing,” sounds like a fun little bop, but he says it was actually inspired by something very serious: trying to figure out where he fits into the pop music landscape these days.
“What’s going through my head is, ‘OK, I’m 45. Do people really want to see me dance? Do people really want to see me carry on? I’ve had my time,'” Jason tells ABC Audio. “And so I struggle with that, like, self-worth of, like, ‘Do I matter?'”
“And then out comes this song, and it’s like, ‘Yes! Who cares? It’s none of your business what people think of you. Just dance the way you want to dance while you can — y’know, while you’re still here.”
But while the dancing in “I Feel Like Dancing” is a metaphor for expressing himself, Jason says he also means actual dancing, which he does to great effect in the song’s choreography-heavy video.
“That’s something I’ve really wanted to do for a long time, but I guess I’ve been a little shy and untrained,” he notes. “So this song was meant to sort of crack me open and remind me that at the end of the day, I’m just an entertainer.”
He also hopes the song will inspire others to, as they say, “dance like nobody’s watching.”
As Jason explains, “If anyone tunes in, the point is so that they can feel some happiness and some joy and some motivation in their own life, to have a rhythm that they can skip to.”
“I Feel Like Dancing” is from Jason’s new album, Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride, due out June 23.
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