{"id":494327,"date":"2026-02-27T21:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/494327\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T21:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:05:08","slug":"bruno-mars-doubles-down-on-silk-sonic-70s-revivalism-in-the-romantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/494327\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruno Mars Doubles Down on Silk Sonic ’70s Revivalism in ‘The Romantic’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen it rains reigning male pop superstars, it pours. The boys are back in town, and two of the three or four biggest guys in the recording business, Bruno Mars<\/a> and Harry Styles, are coincidentally releasing albums on back-to-back weekends, as if teaming up to storm the barricades mostly held in recent years by pop\u2019s girl bosses. So it\u2019s interesting to see what these two alphas are bringing along as stylistic arsenals in their attempts to reassert some dominance, or at least parity. Coming next week is Styles\u2019 intriguingly titled \u201cKiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally,\u201d and we\u2019ll find out soon enough whether Harry means to use the D-word there literally or just figuratively.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut for Mars\u2019 first solo album in 10 years, \u201cThe Romantic,\u201d it is as if disco never happened. It is a time machine back to the mid-1970s, just before dance music took over, with a heavy, heavy emphasis on retro-soul balladry. The album ends with a song called \u201cDance With Me,\u201d but it\u2019s a song dedicated to slow dancing, just like the surprisingly slow-simmering track that opens the album. When the pace does get upped a couple of times, it\u2019s to bring us up to the tempo of the O\u2019Jays, not to snap us back to the time of J. Cole. There\u2019s not a moment on the whole nine-song collection that sounds like it was minted any more freshly than 1976. It\u2019s already been well-established that the album\u2019s first single (and one of its few bangers), \u201cI Just Might,\u201d reminds folks a little of Leo Sayer\u2019s \u201cYou Make Me Feel Like Dancing,\u201d which came out that year. So, truly, here, Mars is Bicentennial Man. <\/p>\n

\n\tGiven how unhappy many people are with 2026, a trip headed exactly 50 years back into the past will be a welcome ride for a lot of hitchhikers. But will you ultimately find \u201cThe Romantic\u201d compelling as anything much more than a mood ring\u2026 er, mood piece? The best predictor for that will be how much you loved or liked \u201cAn Evening With Silk Sonic<\/a>,\u201d the similarly throwback album Mars put out with Anderson .Paak four and a half years ago. (How time flies when you\u2019re arresting it!) Paak has moved on, but Mars is remaining committed to the bit \u2014 really, really committed. It takes some nerve, after a full decade of not putting out a solo album, when that last solo record was a Grammy winner for album of the year (\u201c24k Gold\u201d), to return with something that is completely beholden to styles that went out of fashion before you were born. But it\u2019s slightly less nervy if you think of it more in terms of sticking with the formula that last brought you an album-sized smash. This is \u201cSilk Sonic II,\u201d for most intents and purposes. <\/p>\n

\n\tI am part of the target audience for \u201cThe Romantic,\u201d as an admitted nostalgist who thinks the 1970s was a golden era for just about everything but gas lines. But I\u2019m also not part of the target audience, inasmuch as I don\u2019t prefer the homages to past eras to be completely hermetically sealed, without even slight nods to what has transpired since, let alone an attempt to bring them a little bit into the future. I think \u201cThe Romantic\u201d is actually better than \u201cAn Evening With Silk Sonic,\u201d in several quantifiable ways, including its bold emphasis on ballads, where you really get to hear Mars test what he can do with those pipes, which is a lot. And there\u2019s something even craftier about how well he, his extremely talented co-producer, D-Mile, and his band, the Hooligans, have replicated the exact feel of a great era in record-making. But, among these two albums, it does have the disadvantage of coming second. The album is great as a stunt, but, slightly refined or not, it\u2019s the second time in a row doing what amounts to the same stunt. You can admire his ability to reverse-engineer the cool sounds of his forefathers, but that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re going to be moved by it.<\/p>\n

\n\tEspecially when, once you get past admiring the encyclopedic knowledge of \u201970s flourishes, you realize there\u2019s not really much in the way of great songs here. Nearly everything sounds like a possible candidate for a followup single to \u201cI Just Might,\u201d but nothing jumps out as the pick. There\u2019s actually a decent amount of sub-genre variation from song to song, but emotionally, it\u2019s kind of a flat-line, with the most perfunctory lyrics you will hear on any album this year. There never seems to be even a remote possibility that Mars is telling us anything about his real life amid all the fill-in-the-blank cliches (\u201cThe fire don\u2019t burn like it used to, girl\u201d; \u201cLet\u2019s go to the moon a little later \/ Hope your wings get to fly\u201d; \u201cTurns out you don\u2019t need a rocket ship, no \/ To find your own shooting star\u201d). So, in the age of hyper-autobiographical pop, \u201cThe Romantic\u201d feels weirdly and completely impersonal, unless you consider extreme pastiche a personality. It\u2019s like a fun costume party where you never find out who actually attended. Although, to be fair, Curtis Mayfield is a hell of a mask, right?<\/p>\n

\n\tOne thing that\u2019s kind of interesting, though, is a Latin current that ebbs and flows through a few pieces of the record, starting with the album cover itself, which features hand-written lettering that is meant to remind oldsters of a golden age of Chicano rock. The first couple of tracks seem to be headed toward a concept album in that direction. \u201cRisk It All\u201d is the aforementioned kick-off that really does feel like a bit of a risk, not just because it starts off the album on a slow, pleading note with acoustic guitar plucking and some of Mars\u2019 most supple vocals. There are horns through a lot of the record, but in this number, they\u2019re played as mariachi horns. (It also has arguably the album\u2019s most vapid lyrics \u2014 \u201cI would swim across the sea just to show you \/ Sacrifice my life just to hold you,\u201d et al. \u2014 but never mind those.) He ups the Latin quotient with the tenser rhythms and strings and congas of the second track, \u201cCha Cha Cha\u201d; maybe the title is a giveaway. (On the non-Latin tip, it also interpolates Juvenile\u2019s\u2019s 2004 \u201cSlow Motion,\u201d a nice combo.) But these Latin flavors turn out not to be a constant through the rest of the album. They do return in one of the most up-tempo tracks, \u201cSomething Serious,\u201d a fairly direct cop of \u201cOye Como Va,\u201d which is fun until you start thinking about how the chorus is not that special and you\u2019d rather be listening to \u201cOye Como Va.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the third number, \u201cI Just Might,\u201d snaps you to attention with its booty-shake-or-go-home machismo, the fourth, \u201cGod Was Showing Off,\u201d is when it really settles into the groove where Mars is most comfortable these days, bridging the gap between Motown and Philly soul. \u201cWhy You Wanna Fight?\u201d almost sounds like a parody of some of these genres, with a backing chorus repeatedly and dramatically cooing whyyouwannafight as a single word, in-between the singer\u2019s more extenuated phrases. \u201cOn My Soul\u201d and \u201cNothing Left\u201d bring in some welcome electric guitar licks. Most of the tracks that follow will make you think of the kind of vintage Top 40\/AC soul where it\u2019s summertime and the listenin\u2019 is EZ.<\/p>\n

\n\tOverall, it\u2019s an album that seems designed to be background music, which is not entirely meant as an insult; there\u2019s an art to making music that can be put on at literally almost any party and suit the tastes of grandmas as well as kids, and serve that function for a couple of years or more. But if you were planning to foreground \u201cThe Romantic,\u201d this one may have a more limited shelf life. As a leisure suit of a record, this is not really album-of-the-year material, like \u201c24K Magic\u201d was. It\u2019s not even meant to be that kind of tour de force, to be fair, but it\u2019s also probably not meant to be quite this in-one-ear-and-out-the-other. How can vocals be as bountifully impressive as Mars\u2019 are here and still leave you thinking that there\u2019s no lived experience in any of the songs? <\/p>\n

\n\tThis really is a \u201cromantic\u201d album, but what\u2019s missing is the sensation that the material has any tangible connection to actual love. Unless love for early Kool & the Gang counts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it rains reigning male pop superstars, it pours. The boys are back in town, and two of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[45290,88,216,226318],"class_list":["post-494327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-bruno-mars","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-silk-sonic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}