Having scored two huge-selling albums in his American homeland, including a platinum-selling debut and a follow-up that hit the Billboard top five, Jason Mraz decided to drop everything before making a third.

"I walked away," the Californian singer-songwriter says from his London hotel room. "I fired my band and told my manager I would call when I was ready.

"It gave me the opportunity to make the music I wanted to make, and sing real songs.

"I would encourage anybody in any career to do the same. Walk away from time to time to have a life experience. We've got to a place in society where What do you do?' is the first question anyone asks you. Our careers are starting to determine who we are."

The result of the enforced 16-month lay-off was Mraz's third album, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things, which took its title from a cartoon by Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley, and on release went top three in America.

"I have always been influenced by travel and people in my life," says Jason. "My music is an expression that comes out of that."

Helping his muse flow was a songwriting game, the results of which formed half the album.

"We had five or six people who you shared ideas with, and at the end you had to take the ideas and make them into a song," says Mraz. "Some weeks you tried to make people laugh. Other weeks you were trying to write to deadline so you didn't get kicked out of the game. I started putting more thought into the game, not whether the songs were going to be singles or have mass appeal."

At the time of writing, the third album hasn't broken into the UK top 40, but things could change. His Jack Johnson-style, easy going sound is the perfect soundtrack to a hot summer.

And he received a great reception at the Hard Rock Calling Festival in London last month, where the crowd were singing along with the album's million-times-played myspace hit I'm Yours.

"With myspace I don't have to rely on a promotion team or marketing firm to share my music with people," says Mraz. "I love communicating with bloggers. I love the social network side of it. I think the internet is an amazing step in our evolution as a species."

Last summer he was able to organise a mini-tour of Europe, simply through getting in touch with his online fans to help him out.

"I went to various message boards saying I was going to be back-packing for a few months," he says. "I ended up doing 22 shows in 13 different countries throughout Europe. I was able to sell CDs and all the take money went towards helping me travel or helping the person who was promoting the show. Any artist can do it without a record label."

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