Anybody with even a passing interest in the work of Bruno Mars will most likely have seen him perform as Elvis Presley when he was a kid. The man is a prolific homage-payer, as evidenced throughout a chart-topping, mall-soundtrack career that has borrowed the best bits from across the R&B, soul and pop arenas. But with ‘The Romantic’, his first album in a decade, his penchant for pastiche is his biggest problem.
Album opener Risk It All feels like Olivia Newton-John’s Grease ballad Hopelessly Devoted To You has been cocconed in Spanish guitars. Other songs sound like offcuts swept from studio floors at the turn of the ‘70s — Why You Wanna Fight? lands like an Al Green offcut, and Nothing Left sounds like something Curtis Mayfield passed over for a B-side.
Of course, Mars borrowing from the classics as liberally as he has means that no single song on ‘The Romantic’ is bad, per se.
It’s all solidly made, often stunningly produced and really well performed. It’s just that his dedication to studying the craft results in an album that feels like recording a voice note while stood beside a well-stocked jukebox.
Of course, this is nothing new in the career of Bruno Mars, it’s just been pushed to more of an extreme than ever before. It will shift units, because that’s what Bruno Mars does, and if it means that his young fans start to discover the classics, then maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.
Bruno Mars Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sat July 18 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
Sun July 19 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
Wed July 22 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
Fri July 24 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
Sat July 25 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
Tue July 28 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
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