BRUNO MARS - The Romantic

With a career full of accolades, sold-out shows, a lengthy Las Vegas residency, and an innate ability to blend different influences, Bruno Mars is one of the most celebrated pop stars of our era, the kind destined to leave a lasting mark. Yet he's also an artist who struggles to release albums: leaving aside the one made in partnership with Anderson.Paak, released under the name Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars has completed just four records in sixteen years, the most recent of which — "24K Magic" — dates back a full ten years.

These days that's a geological era, and yet he hasn't been forgotten, not least because in the meantime — just to keep in practice — he's often topped the international charts thanks to enormously successful hits born of star-studded collaborations, from Lady Gaga to Cardi B, from Rosé of Blackpink to Gucci Mane and Sexyy Red.

Still, being recognised as one of the most credible heirs to Michael Jackson must be a rather heavy label to carry, one that raises audience and critical expectations enormously. So what's the best solution for not disappointing anyone? Take zero risks, settle into your own hyper-reassuring comfort zone, keep doing what you already do best, without even bothering too much about writing new songs.

And indeed, you can quite happily dust off old favourites, the ones everyone already loves, just tweak a comma here and there so they can pass as your own, and there you go — ready to don your most flamboyant outfit before heading off to collect platinum records and Grammy Awards. Take any track at random among the nine (for a total of 31 minutes of music, hardly a titanic effort for what's supposed to be the result of ten years of songwriting) on "The Romantic" (not even the effort of coming up with a remotely original title), "Something Serious": let's not beat around the bush, it's his personal spin on "Oye Como Va" by Santana, itself already a cover of a Tito Puente song dating back to 1963.

"The Romantic" is all there in those three minutes, which distill the desire to bolster Mars's soul-pop with pronounced Caribbean and South American accents (which he handles skilfully, given his Puerto Rican roots). That's the defining trait of an album that, as the title makes clear, settles into a firmly sentimental mood, steeped in grandeur through lush orchestral arrangements. Bruno Mars is certainly a phenomenal entertainer, a showman with few equals in the world, an impeccable impersonator capable of replicating anyone's past with surgical precision. But talent, when not paired with a genuine drive to explore, always risks producing rather inconsequential results — precisely that drive to explore which the legendary artists Mars draws on certainly possessed.

Things kick off with the syrupy "Risk It All", which unfurls amid tex-mex horns and an elegantly sensual Latin rhythm. Just as enveloping is the following "Cha Cha Cha", while "God Was Showing Off" and "Dance With Me" draw generously from the best 1970s soul, from the immortal classics penned under Motown and Stax. The infectious funky groove of the lead single "I Just Might" immediately feels unrepresentative of an album that leans mostly towards glossy power ballads, like "Why You Wanna Fight?" and "Nothing Left", which shift the focus towards a soft rock AOR sound (never without strong r&b leanings), guitar solos included. By the time "On My Soul" rolls around, it sounds like Earth Wind & Fire and Michael Jackson blended together, yet another pleasant forgery of something we've already heard hundreds of times.

To be clear, "The Romantic" is a flawlessly produced and played record (helped along by an unlimited budget), sung masterfully, but with next to no communicative urgency. Peter Hernandez, the little prince of Honolulu, today the world's number one most-streamed artist, instead of aiming for his own masterpiece settles into a latin-soul-yacht-pop-rock (where "yacht" carries, for many, a distinctly derogatory undertone) in which form triumphs over substance: a sequence engineered from the drawing board to accompany any gala dinner held inside a luxury hotel, a flawless piece of sonic furniture.

If the goal was to confirm himself as an impeccable restorer of other people's sounds, "The Romantic" hits the mark perfectly; but for anyone looking for something that goes beyond mere aesthetic self-satisfaction, this record will prove a deep disappointment, even if, translated into a live show, it will still be yet another pyrotechnic spectacle bearing the Bruno Mars name.

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02/03/2026