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6 hours ago
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It is 10 years since Bruno Mars last released a solo album. An eternity in pop music, and yet you’d struggle to describe the follow-up to the umpteen-platinum 24K Magic as eagerly awaited: not for reasons of snark, but simply because the world has hardly been starved of Bruno Mars in the intervening decade.
With Anderson .Paak, he co-piloted Silk Sonic’s hit album An Evening with Silk Sonic. He variously collaborated with Cardi B, Gucci Mane, Sexy Redd and Ed Sheeran. Die With a Smile, 2024’s soft rock duet with Lady Gaga went on to become the most streamed song of last year. Meanwhile, he also recorded the most globally successful song released in 2025, the infernally catchy APT., with Blackpink’s Rosé. There have been two world tours, two Las Vegas residencies, the opening of his own Vegas bar, an appearance on online game Fortnite and the 2026 ambassadorship for Record Store Day.
You can’t fault him for his industry, but it means that The Romantic doesn’t carry the big swing of a grand return. That hasn’t stopped its lead single I Just Might reaching No 1 in 11 countries (it’s currently lodged in the UK Top 10, surrounded by artists who were still schoolkids when 24K Magic came out), either despite, or perhaps because of, its resemblance to Leo Sayer’s 1976 hit You Make Me Feel Like Dancing. You can scoff at that as a profoundly unhip reference point if you want, but as the TikTok ubiquity of Edison Lighthouse’s Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes or Chris Rainbow’s dimly recalled 70s soft-rock track Be Like a Woman proves, we live in a world where long-held notions of what’s hip and what’s not went out of the window some time ago.
As it turns out, resemblances to old songs are something of a hallmark on The Romantic, an album that takes a lot of its cues from Silk Sonic’s update of the soft soul peddled by the Chi-Lites and the Stylistics 50 years ago: Why You Wanna Fight? in particular could have slipped on to the Silk Sonic album without causing a jolt. You don’t have to be an expert in musicology to spot the influence of Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up during On My Soul or of the O’Jays’ Backstabbers on Cha Cha Cha: there’s a point during the latter where the music stops dead and it’s hard to stop yourself involuntarily crying “what they do?” in the manner of the 1972 Philly soul hit, just as it’s a struggle to not start singing Tito Puente’s Oye Como Va over the intro of Something Serious. God Was Showing Off is deeply reminiscent of Barbara Acklin’s 1969 classic Am I the Same Girl, or, if you prefer, the instrumental version, Soulful Strut by Young-Holt Unlimited (even if you think you don’t know either, you’ll immediately recognise the horn line from a TV ad for Vision Express). The lyrics are also familiar – there ain’t no mountain high enough, and he just called to say “I love you”.
Glaringly obvious musical references have hardly harmed anyone’s chances of having a hit in recent years, least of all Bruno Mars – APT. was so indebted to Toni Basil’s Mickey that the writers of that song got a credit – and the references here are so glaringly obvious, even to a young fanbase, that they avoid the charge of sneaky borrowing: there’s nothing sneaky about it, so it must be a heartfelt homage. You’re left in no doubt that Mars is a really talented performer – listen to his voice soaring on closer Dance With Me – and has great taste in music.
The real issue with The Romantic is that its highlights are the songs that sound like songs you already know. Better to have Something Serious’s Latin-influenced slink than the ho-hum balladry of Nothing Left, or opener Risk It All, a runny 70s MOR ballad not much perked up by the addition of mariachi horns. And even the blatant homages are not good enough to prevent you thinking you may more usefully spend your time listening to the originals.
Instead, Mars and his co-writers just dump well-curated influences – from the umpteen classic soul signifiers in the songs to the Jimi Hendrix-y headband Mars sports in the cover illustration – without bothering to rearrange them into something new. It’s perfectly pleasant, but for all the effort that has clearly gone into crafting it, this is fundamentally lazy songwriting. Is that really the way you sell 150m records? Apparently so.
