In pop music, ten years is a lifetime. Such is the staying power of Bruno Mars, though, that it feels like he never left\u2026 and that his return was greeted with an instant number one hit.<\/p>\n
To be fair, Mars has been busy guesting on top hits (recently, \u201cDie With A Smile\u201d and \u201cAPT\u201d), as well as his Vegas residency and his Silk Sonic collaboration a couple years back. But he abandoned his successful solo recording career for a decade to pursue these other things, which is unusual for pop stars.<\/p>\n
His return on The Romantic, <\/i>though, is not an epic comeback or consolidation of strengths. It\u2019s a quick 30-minute, nine-song listen that seems designed to get Mars back in the public eye as a solo performer and give him some fuel for his 2026 tour. <\/p>\n
To be sure, the album sounds<\/i> great; some care obviously went into making it, and Mars is too good to release haphazard, sloppy music. The time off also allowed him to grow up a little; now at 40, he is no longer dropping clunky sex metaphors (the carrot, the rocket) or references to Versace and shallow women. He has instead leaned into the \u201cGrenade\u201d\/ \u201cIf I Was Your Man\u201d persona\u2014the romantic\u2014across these nine tracks.<\/p>\n
But instead of looking forward, Mars continues to look back at classic sounds for inspiration. Most younger fans likely won\u2019t have heard the songs that inspired the songwriting here, but older fans will hear very direct 70\u2019s cribs from the Jackson 5, O\u2019Jays (\u201cBackstabber\u201d), Leo Sayer and Santana. Regarding the latter, as good as \u201cSomething Serious\u201d is, it\u2019s hard not to start singing \u201cOye Como Va\u201d or \u201cEvil Ways\u201d as soon as the Latin drums start playing. Latin influences are all over this album, from the percussion work to the horns on several of the tracks.<\/p>\n
The big hit off the album is \u201cI Just Might,\u201d which is bit peppier and more dance-ready than the bulk of this album, and an efficient and fun single in vein of Mars\u2019 best work. No notes. \u201cSomething Serious\u201d is also great, an uptempo tune that hopefully gets some airplay, and \u201cOn My Soul\u201d also grows with repeated listens and some well-placed \u201cwoo-hoos\u201d in the bridge that reminded me of Coldplay\u2019s \u201cAdventure Of A Lifetime,\u201d but better.<\/p>\n
Mind you, these are all love songs, and that\u2019s about the extent of what the lyrics consider. The bulk of the album (before those aforementioned songs) consists of slower ballads, from \u201cWhy You Wanna Fight\u201d and \u201cGod Was Showing Off\u201d to \u201cRisk It All\u201d and \u201cDance With Me,\u201d which get repetitive after a while. The best of the ballads is the go-for-broke \u201cNothing Left,\u201d punctuating the emotion with a guitar solo, and the only ballad with true staying power. \u201cCha Cha Cha\u201d seems like a missed opportunity, leaning into easy-listening territory; it sounds good, and it should work, but it just doesn\u2019t land with any force. <\/p>\n
So we end with the usual ratio on a Bruno Mars album: a couple of uptempo hits, a fair amount of ballads, a mashup of styles, and a polished, professional sheen that is never not enjoyable, but also doesn\u2019t stray out of \u201clove song\u201d territory. Also missing is Mars\u2019 sense of humor, which I suppose is inevitable as he hit middle age, but still. It\u2019s hard to get excited about an album like this, but if you listen to it on a date night or put your favorite tracks on a Best of Bruno playlist, the best of it sounds just fine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":35451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9339],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-47347","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bruno-mars","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47347"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}