Bruno Mars: Romantic Review – You’d better listen to the songs he blatantly imitates | Bruno Mars

IIt’s been 10 years since Bruno Mars released his last solo album. Eternal in pop music, yet you’d be hard-pressed to describe the next installment of 24K Magic’s multi-platinum hit as eagerly awaited: not for reasons of irony, but simply because the world has hardly starved of Bruno Mars in the intervening decade.

With Anderson .Paak, he co-led Silk Sonic’s hit album An Evening with Silk Sonic. He has variously collaborated with Cardi B, Gucci Mane, Sexy Redd and Ed Sheeran. “Die With a Smile,” his 2024 soft rock duet with Lady Gaga, became the most-streamed song of the past year. At the same time, he also scored the biggest global hit single released in 2025, the 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 in the online game Fortnite, and a 2026 Record Store Day ambassador.

You can’t blame him for making it, but it does mean that The Romantic doesn’t have the huge swing of a big return. That didn’t stop its lead single “I Might Just Be” reaching No. 1 in 11 countries (it’s currently in the UK Top 10, flanked by artists who were still school kids when 24K Magic was released), either despite, or perhaps because of, its similarity to Leo Sayer’s 1976 hit “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.” You can scoff at this as a profound reference point if you want, but as Edison Lighthouse’s TikTok virality proves Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes or Chris Rainbow’s 70s soft rock song Be Like a Woman, we live in a world where outdated notions of what’s trendy and what hasn’t gone out the window for some time.

As it turns out, the resemblance to older songs is a hallmark of The Romantic, an album that takes many of its cues from Silk Sonic’s update of the smooth soul popularized by the Chi-Lites and Stylistics 50 years ago: Why Do You Want to Fight? In particular it could have slipped into a Silk Sonic album without causing a jolt. You don’t have to be a musicologist to detect the influence of Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” during On My Soul or the influence of The O’Jays’ Backstabbers on Cha Cha Cha: there comes a point during the latter where the music stops moving and it’s hard to keep yourself from crying involuntarily “What are they doing?” Like the 1972 Philly Soul hit, as is not starting to sing Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va” during the intro to “Something Serious.” God Was Showing Off is strongly reminiscent of Barbara Acklin’s 1969 classic “Am I the Same Girl,” or, if you prefer, the musical version, Soulful Strut by Young-Holt Unlimited (even if you think you don’t know either, you’ll instantly recognize the horn line from a TV commercial for Vision Express). The lyrics are also familiar – there’s no mountain high enough, and he called to say “I love you.”

Blatantly obvious music references haven’t hurt anyone’s chances of making it big in recent years, least of all Bruno Mars – APT. He was so indebted to Toni Basil’s Mickey’s Song that the writers of that song took credit – and the references here are So It’s glaringly obvious, even to their young fan base, that they’re avoiding the charge of specious borrowing: there’s nothing disingenuous about this, so it must be a sincere homage. You have no doubt that Mars is a truly talented performer — listen to his voice soar near Dance With Me — and has great taste in music.

The real problem with The Romantic is that its highlights are the songs that sound like songs you already know. Better to have the Latin-influenced “Something Serious” than the droning ballad of “Nothing Left,” or opener “Risk It All,” a MOR song from the 1970s that’s not much enlivened by the addition of mariachi horns. And even the blatant homage isn’t good enough to keep you from thinking your time is better spent listening to the originals.

Instead, Mars and his writers toss out well-orchestrated influences—from the countless classic soul connotations in the songs to the Jimi Hendrix-y Mars sporting a headband in the cover illustration—without bothering to rearrange them into something new. It’s quite enjoyable, but despite all the effort clearly put into crafting it, this is basically lazy songwriting. Is this really how you sell 150 million records? Apparently so.