Now 46, multi-Grammy Award-winner Jason Mraz was born in 1977 — the same year Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Jerry Lee Lewis, then 42, released his melancholic country-music single “Middle Age Crazy.”

Almost no one listening to Mraz’s often buoyant new album, “Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride,” will be reminded of Lewis belting out such high-octane 1950s rock classics as “Great Balls of Fire” and “High School Confidential.” But there are clear thematic similarities between some of Mraz’s musically upbeat new album and the downbeat “Middle Age Crazy,” on which the now-deceased Lewis reflected: And today he’s forty years old, going on twenty / Don’t look for the gray in his hair / ‘Cause he ain’t got any.

“I thought I’d be done at 40,” said Mraz, who — six years later — has responded to middle-age with a surprise left turn.

Half the songs on “Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride” embrace dance-pop and vintage disco. They were inspired, in part, by such Mraz favorites as Chic, Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, The Bee Gees and Jamiroquai. More on that in a moment.

“When I was a little kid, I saw being in your 40s as old age,” Mraz recalled. “As a teen, my 20s were something to aspire to — 40 always seemed just out of reach. I thought I’d be done (with music) by then, and the ideal life would be a family, kids and moving on.

“When you turn 40, it’s exciting. I celebrated my 40th birthday performing at the Hollywood Bowl. But when you turn 42, nobody cares.”

Not coincidentally, Mraz muses about having turned 42 in the lyrics to “Little Time,” a lilting ballad from his new album. In the same song, he also ponders what might happen “if I reach 65.”

The press materials accompanying “Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride” make several references to Mraz being in his 40s. Such pulsating, four-on-the-floor new songs as “Getting Started,” “I Feel Like Dancing” and “Feel Good Too” — the album’s opening three numbers — sound like energetic odes to dancing the night away with youthful joy, if not outright abandon.

Or, as this usually sunny troubadour put it in a statement when “I Feel Like Dancing” was released as the album’s first single in February: “Songs appear out of a real necessity, and this song appeared as I struggled with identity and self-worth in my mid-40s.”

Mraz paused for thought when asked if has undergone a midlife crisis.

“I don’t think I’ve had a midlife crisis just yet,” he replied. “But maybe I have — and I haven’t lived long enough past it to see that: ‘Oh, yeah, that was definitely a midlife crisis.’

“I have absolutely shaken things up, over and over, for myself. I can see that pattern reappearing throughout my life. And every time I do, I rediscover myself through the power of songwriting. And I think, ‘I’m okay.’”

‘A lot of vanity in my youth’

The pros and cons of aging can differ from person to person, as Mraz readily acknowledged.

Superficial concerns can fade. Wisdom can be gained from experience. But for a veteran artist who has been in the public eye for more than 20 years as music trends constantly change, feeling secure about your position can be challenging.

“The older I get, certain worries and stresses just sort of fade away,” Mraz said. “I don’t stress as much about how I look or surface-level things, like fashion. As a young person, I cared about, ‘Do I fit in? How do I look?’ There was a lot of vanity in my youth.

“The cons, as you get older, are that I’m not really in the youth category anymore. Here I am, making a pop album and dance album. In music, those categories are dominated by young people, 18-28, and always have been.

“So, there’s this feeling of, ‘I’m not really in the little kid category any more — or the older group. I’m floating in the middle.’”

Middle-age is not the only factor that inspired Mraz to write and record new songs specifically designed to encourage him — and his listeners — to party down and shake their collective booty.

He also credits his mother, June Tomes, for encouraging him to make an overtly pop-oriented album. Mraz wasn’t getting any younger, she noted, so he should do a pop album “before it’s too late.” He concurred. The liner notes for “Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride” dedicate the album to “Mama June.”

Speaking recently from his Oceanside, Calif. farm home, Mraz — who married Christina Carano in 2015 and recently announced their divorce — stressed that he specifically sought to make a pop album that embraced old-school music values.

“I always really wanted to make a dance-pop album, but not an electronic (dance) album that leaned on computer programs and drum machines,” he said.

“I wanted to make human dance music. So, sonically, that’s what our effort was. And thematically, I noticed that what was missing from my shows — year after year — was that I didn’t have enough up-tempo songs that could turn the show into a dance party for my audience and myself.

“How would I rate my dancing? Right now, about 3 out of 10. But I want to be better. And that’s how a song like ‘I Feel Like Dancing’ finds its way through my subconscious and lands on the page. Because I try to generate experiences I haven’t had yet, or want to have, and songs can help.”

For at least half the selections on “Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride” — whose title comes from the lyrics to “Disco Sun,” a song on the album — Mraz takes a deep dive into the music of the 1970s and early 1980s. To cite one case in point, the slinky grooves, sleek instrumental work and deftly executed higher-register lead vocals on “Feel Like Dancing” evoke the music of Boz Scaggs and Michael Jackson in their respective primes.

“Boz probably subconsciously — I’ve got a few of his records,” Mraz said.

“Michael? I definitely had his posters on my wall growing up. Probably the first song I ever danced to was something on his ‘Thriller’ album, when I was 4 or 5, and was asking my family what dancing was and where the beat was.

“So, yeah, Michael has always been an influence. But making this album, I didn’t really study those albums by him or Boz. I found myself listening to Nile Rodgers’ records with Chic, Giorgio Moroder’s ‘Flashdance’ soundtrack album, Donna Summer and The Bee Gees. I was trying to understand how great dance music was made.”

Nine of the 10 songs on “Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride” were co-written by Raining Jane, the four-woman Los Angeles band Mraz first collaborated with in 2007.

“There was a concerted effort to make this in tandem,” he said. “And I love giving Raining Jane credit, because they were in the studio with me, they were part of the writing process, and they (are) on my summer tour.”