It is 10 years since Bruno Mars final released a solo album. An eternity in pop music, and but you’d fight to list the apply-up to the umpteen-platinum 24K Magic as eagerly awaited: now no longer for reasons of snark, but simply for the reason that world has infrequently been starved of Bruno Mars in the intervening decade.

With Anderson .Paak, he co-piloted Silk Sonic’s hit album An Evening with Silk Sonic. He variously collaborated with Cardi B, Gucci Mane, Keen Redd and Ed Sheeran. Die With a Smile, 2024’s mushy rock duet with Lady Gaga went on to became potentially the most streamed song of final 365 days. In the intervening time, he also recorded potentially the most globally winning song released in 2025, the infernally catchy APT., with Blackpink’s Rosé. There earn been two world excursions, two Las Vegas residencies, the gap of his contain Vegas bar, an look on online game Fortnite and the 2026 ambassadorship for Story Store Day.

You would possibly perchance perchance’t fault him for his industry, alternatively it methodology that The Romantic doesn’t lift the tremendous swing of a sizable return. That hasn’t stopped its lead single I Very finest Might maybe reaching Number 1 in 11 countries (it’s for the time being lodged in the UK Top 10, surrounded by artists who had been aloof schoolkids when 24K Magic came out), both despite, or perchance on legend of, its resemblance to Leo Sayer’s 1976 hit You Invent Me Truly feel Savor Dancing. You would possibly perchance perchance scoff at that as a profoundly unhip reference level when you happen to favor, but because the TikTok ubiquity of Edison Lighthouse’s Savor Grows The place My Rosemary Goes or Chris Rainbow’s dimly recalled 70s mushy-rock observe Be Savor a Lady proves, we live in a world the place long-held notions of what’s hip and what’s now no longer went out of the window some time in the past.

As it appears to be like, resemblances to primitive songs are something of a hallmark on The Romantic, an album that takes a lot of its cues from Silk Sonic’s update of the mushy soul peddled by the Chi-Lites and the Stylistics 50 years in the past: Why You Wanna Fight? in explicit would possibly perchance earn slipped on to the Silk Sonic album with out causing a jolt. You don’t can earn to be an educated in musicology to space the affect of Curtis Mayfield’s Switch On Up at some stage in On My Soul or of the O’Jays’ Backstabbers on Cha Cha Cha: there’s a level at some stage in the latter the place the music stops uninteresting and it’s laborious to stop yourself involuntarily crying “what they manufacture?” in the form of the 1972 Philly soul hit, appropriate as it’s a fight to now no longer originate singing Tito Puente’s Oye Como Va over the intro of One thing Severe. God Became Displaying Off is deeply equivalent to Barbara Acklin’s 1969 classic Am I the Same Lady, or, when you happen to favor, the instrumental version, Soulful Strut by Young-Holt Unlimited (even when you happen to hang you don’t know both, you’ll without extend recognise the horn line from a TV ad for Imaginative and prescient Explicit). The lyrics are also acquainted – there ain’t no mountain excessive adequate, and he appropriate called to affirm “I a lot like you”.

Glaringly evident musical references earn infrequently harmed somebody’s potentialities of getting winning in recent years, least of all Bruno Mars – APT. became as soon as so indebted to Toni Basil’s Mickey that the writers of that song got a credit score – and the references right here are so manifestly evident, even to a young fanbase, that they steer clear of the price of sneaky borrowing: there’s nothing sneaky about it, so it wants to be a heartfelt homage. You’re left in absolute self belief that Mars is a indubitably talented performer – hear to his insist hovering on nearer Dance With Me – and has gigantic style in music.

The true field with The Romantic is that its highlights are the songs that sound devour songs you realize. Higher to earn One thing Severe’s Latin-influenced slink than the ho-hum balladry of Nothing Left, or opener Possibility It All, a runny 70s MOR ballad now no longer worthy perked up by the addition of mariachi horns. And even the blatant homages are now no longer appropriate adequate to forestall you thinking you would possibly perchance maybe more usefully spend your time being attentive to the originals.

As a replacement, Mars and his co-writers appropriate dump effectively-curated influences – from the umpteen classic soul signifiers in the songs to the Jimi Hendrix-y headscarf Mars sports activities in the veil illustration – with out bothering to rearrange them into something current. It’s perfectly pleasant, but for your entire effort that has clearly gone into crafting it, right here is principally sluggish songwriting. Is that if truth be told the methodology you sell 150m information? It sounds as in that case.