ALBUM REVIEW – BRUNO MARS

After 10 years of not dropping a solo studio album, Bruno Mars popped out on February 27th with “The Romantic”, a brief nine track record with a strong focus on latin and soul music. Now I can definitely appreciate his 2021 collaboration album, “Silk Sonic” as well as his recent singles from 2024, but I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much from this album. Although the lead single, “I Just Might”, was undeniably a catchy and fun song, it did not leave me expecting much of a unique artistic direction for this record.

The first track, “Risk It All”, is a slow, latin-inspired love ballad that sounds like a direct rip off of “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. It’s not a bad song, but it’s difficult to ignore the familiarity that comes with it, and originality is the number one most important factor in music for me. The rest of the track list only seems to continue down this road with more copy and paste, formulaic soul songs. The lyrics aren’t anything interesting and the song concepts are all pretty basic and bland.

However, to pinpoint some highlights, I did really enjoy the tracks, “On My Soul” and “Dance With Me”. And most of all, I had to applaud the full instrumental studio sound the record went for, not that I don’t love my electronic sounds too. Overall, “The Romantic” is not a bad record, but it’s safe, and safe doesn’t make people want to come back for more.

LYRICAL INQUIRY’S RATING: 5/10

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