Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	(63/100)
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Boston Globe	positive
Entertainment Weekly	B
The Guardian
Metro UK	favorable
New York Times	favorable
The Observer
Rolling Stone
Virgin Media
Under The Gun	7.5/10

Love Is a Four Letter Word is the fourth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Jason Mraz, released on April 13, 2012, by Atlantic Records. "I Won't Give Up" was released as the album's first single on January 3, 2012.

In November 2009, Mraz posted on his MySpace page plans for a new album to be recorded starting in December, writing, "In 2 weeks time I will enter the studio and begin recording the next album. Only a handful of songs are written and slated but the momentum of love is with me. Every day new verses get added on. The songs are coming together piece by piece. The process is unlike any of the other records before this. It's like I'm being gifted the album without having to do the work. I'm creating that in 6 months the project will be complete and then we'll hit the road again with new sounds and new musicians."

In 2010, Mraz spent some time in London, England, where he worked on songs for his new album with the producer Martin Terefe and wrote with the British singer-songwriter, Dido. In August 2010, Mraz had a Q&A interview with Spin magazine in which he said that possible titles for his fourth album were Peace Canoe or The Love Album.

On December 8, 2011, Mraz told Jeff Benjamin of Billboard that the "album is finished" except for one track he was attempting to re-work as an acoustic version. Describing the album, he said, "It's not a departure in the sound of the genre in any way, it's just different tones, different textures. Musically, I think people are going to like it. It's personal. It's melodic. And it's mellow. There's a couple of up-tempo tunes, but mostly the rhythm of the heartbeat kind of takes precedence on this record. Medium-tempo tunes; which I love. It feels more like the pace of life. At least, based on my life and what I've been doing."

On January 20, 2012, during a performance streamed live from the Bing Bar at the Sundance Film Festival, Mraz told the audience that the album's title was Love Is a Four Letter Word.

The album received favorable reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 63, based on 10 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, writing, "Mraz pushes himself into new territory, creating music that's perilously close to sounding seductive." Kyle Anderson wrote for Entertainment Weekly that "he tiptoes the line between hammock-strung wisdom and twee naïveté with such goofball charisma that otherwise forgettable love-each-other-doodles become sweetly breezy anthems." Matthew Horton from Virgin Media wrote that "It's all light as air, of course, and corny as hell but Mraz isn't here to kick James any statues. If you're after unchallenging whimsy with the odd sparky arrangement he'll continue to do just fine." Caroline Sullivan from The Guardian complimented "his words with a variety of genres that show him to be a cracking musician." She also wrote that "this is pure, undemanding pleasure: his voice has a natural affinity with elegant lounge-jazz and introspective folk-blues, as well as the delicately hewn soft rock that made his name." Jody Rosen from Rolling Stone gave the album 3 out of 5 stars, writing that "inspired, perhaps, by the massive success of his lite-reggae anthem "I'm Yours", he's added more world-music textures to his folk pop, and turned up the blissed-out vibes on the album." Sandy Cohen from The Boston Globe wrote, "The songs about heartache don't detract from the optimistic vibe of this 12-song collection."

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