The cover depicts the 25-year-old Virginia singer-songwriter sat in the gutter with a cockerel, haplessly waiting for the rocket of fame to hit him.

Mraz's rise is further mirrored in songs such as Curbside Prophet: he was plucked from obscurity (street life in Manhattan and then acoustic gigs in San Diego coffee-houses) by a major label.

The question is whether the company spotted talent or just someone frighteningly malleable. Mraz's biggest influence is Dave Matthews, and he makes the naive error of working with his hero's producer, John Alagia. That influence - and perhaps also that of Robbie Williams - looms large in Mraz's wordplay.

Alagia, for his part, smothers the songs with gloss, which makes Mraz sound at best excited and at worst overconfident and smug in his new environment. The fragile Who Needs Shelter and well-crafted Absolutely Zero give glimpses of what he may have sounded like before. But if this brutal attempt at mass appeal fails, even the coffee-houses may not want him back.