The singer would everything risk it for her. He would give her the Moon want to give. He would continue firework run and oceans swim across. Just to be with her. To prove that she belongs in his arms.
What does she think about that?
Who is she anyway?
No idea.
The opening song op The Romanticthe first solo album in ten years by world star Bruno Mars, released on Friday, is not really about her, but about him. Just as in the songs that follow, little is said about the women for whom he yearns so grandly and compellingly. Except for how great they move on the dance floor, and how God went out of his way when he created them.
Hawaiian-born Bruno Mars (Peter Gene Hernandez, 1985) excels in anonymous, often smooth love songs on his new solo album. There is in ‘Why You Wanna Fight’ or a fight may have taken place, but how and about what remains unclear, and the conflict functions mainly as a bridge for Mars to wonder, on glowing guitar sounds and with a choir crooning, whether she would rather make love sweetly (sweet choir: “Sweeeeeeet love”).
Bruno Mars has been one of the most internationally successful pop stars for over 15 years with his professional, friendly and nostalgic, no-nonsense pop funk. He was on two of the three globally most streamed hits on Spotify last year, with collaborations with Lady Gaga and ROSÉ. The first single from this new album immediately reached number 1 in the US and was also number 1 in the Netherlands. And for his new world tour he sold 2.1 million tickets in one day, a record. At the beginning of July, the singer will perform no fewer than four times in a sold-out Johan Cruijff Arena.
That first single, ‘I Just Might‘, is also the first world hit of 2026. It starts classically with a countdown to the sound of drum sticks and a doo-doo-doochorus, and is tight and light and pleasant to the ear with fresh guitars and rustling percussion and glowing brass. The song has a clip that nods to the seventies, in which Mars plays all the members of the band, and sings flirtatiously and lasciviously about a lady in the club.
‘Uptown Funk’
Bruno Mars has been the reigning king of retro pop for a long time – including in his hugely successful hit with Mark Ronson ‘Uptown Funk’, with which they won the Grammy Award for song of the year in 2016. And as part of duo Silk Sonic with Anderson .Paak, which won the same prestigious song of the year award in 2021, with ‘Leave The Door Open’. The American singer now has more monthly listeners on Spotify than any other artist on earth.
On his new album, Mars created all the songs together with his producer D’Mile and the two create a particularly coherent sounding and relatively compact album (total playing time: 31 minutes) that is exceptionally well produced. The compositions, inspired by classic soul and Latin rock in particular, sound absolutely great and the productions are impeccable and nuanced. With rich and warm strings, relaxed wind instruments that don’t become too sharp, and perfectly matched melodies and harmony vocals.
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The musical sources of inspiration are sometimes very explicit – such as how ‘Something Serious’ builds on Carlos Santana’s version of ‘Oye Como Va’, and the spirit of soul legend Curtis Mayfield emphatically haunts the driven retro-soul of ‘On My Soul’; a song in which Bruno Mars, singing intensely, discovers “that you don’t need a rocket to find your own shooting star.”
Instant familiarity
But more often it sounds very recognizable without you being able to put your finger on it. Mars knows the art of delivering instant, familiar-sounding hits that sound, right from the first note, as if you’ve spent your entire life with them. His singing style, influenced by soul, R&B and lover’s rock, is light-hearted, melodic and versatile. The brushes on his drums, those mariachi horns, the sustained strings, the sprinting percussion, the shouts and choirs – every musical detail is tasteful and well thought out, and sounds exactly as you expect it to. Already on the first listen you predict: now this rhyming word comes, and now it goes up a tone, and it is almost always correct.
Bruno Mars doesn’t want to invent anything new, or even shake up pop music. He is a lover of the ultimate pop song and also the songs on it The Romantic sound great and will be heard everywhere. He and D’Mile bring together quite diverse musical influences and complex chords and harmonies in pleasant-sounding world hits-for-everyone that no one can fault.
That is also the pitfall of his music. Not much new happens and it sounds fantastic but also quite interchangeable. In his outbursts and with his generic lyrics, Mars sounds a little too often like a parody of a classic R&B singer. And musically, recognizability is nice, but predictability can irritate. That short guitar solo here, that haphazard drum fill there, it is sometimes way too much of a fill-in exercise.
But it doesn’t really get irritating. Mars is too good a pop vocalist for that, and his music is simply too good and catchy in terms of structure and composition. To such an extent that you even forgive him those kitschy teenage poetry texts about running through fire and swimming across oceans.
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