With his breezy, quirky, and self-assured tunes, it always seems like singer-songwriter Jason Mraz has it all figured out.
But the “Lucky” singer feels like his “life is just starting,” as he told actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson on a recent episode of the Dinner With Me podcast.
Although Mraz implied his bisexual identity in a 2018 poem, it took a few years (not to mention, a divorce and stint on Dancing With the Stars) for the 47-year-old to feel fully comfortable discussing being bi in public.
How about we take this to the next level?
Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
His journey to acceptance was due, in part, to his conservative upbringing in Virginia. Though he added his parents are now “extremely supportive.”
“In the ’90s, being gay was like [the] punchline of a joke, and I didn’t want to be the punchline of a joke,” he explained, adding that he kept his “nose down” and “didn’t really have too many sexual experiences in high school.”
As a student at New York City’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy — where Ferguson, coincidentally, also took classes — Mraz admitted that he also wasn’t quite sure of who he was.
“[I’m this] skinny, scrawny, 18-year-old kid in New York,” he explained. “I don’t even know what to flirt with, who to flirt with, how to flirt. The romance in my songs was just copying other romance in songs, like these are the things that you sing about to please others.”
After high school, Mraz was working as a janitor in Virginia when he got the itch to head out west and find inspiration in the California sun. Not only did the move jumpstart his career, but it also introduced him to people who’d eventually encourage him to come out.
“I met a community of people that [saw] me in a new way that I’d never full been seen before and I liked how I was being seen and heard,” Mraz said.
Still, there was a part of him that “took with me the conservative street that I grew up on, and that was very hard to ignore or to break out of.”
In his new era of dating and being open about his attraction to men and women, Mraz is enjoying himself.
The only difference, he explained, is his “experiences are few, whereas other people [his] age might be more experienced.”
And despite being the man behind gorgeously infatuated tunes like “I’m Yours” (which Ferguson actually played at his wedding to Justin Mikita), Mraz is still on the search for the one.
“I can’t say that I have found love yet,” he admitted.
But it’s clear that nothing is going to shake his optimism. As he sings on a track from his latest record Mystery Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride: “Imagine the life we get to make / How lucky we get to get things started.”
Don't forget to share:
