Bruno Mars’ ‘The Romantic’: All 9 Tracks Ranked

A rare breakup song on The Romantic — or at least a “fire don’t burn the way it used to” song — “Nothing Left” is effective enough, but a little nondescript by Mars’ standards. The lyric is calling out either for a much more stripped-down arrangement or for totally blown-out power ballad bombast, but it gets caught a little in the middle on this penultimate album track.

Some good lines — “Is ‘Heaven’ your name/ Or is it ‘Divine’?/ Don’t matter, girl, it’s gonna look good next to mine” is probably best of the bunch — and a two-chord groove reminiscent of a dreamier “Soulful Strut” is never a bad idea. But “God Was Showing Off” could’ve probably used a little more funk to sell its cheesier lyrical absurdities — and it also could’ve stood to stretch some of those a little farther in the first place  — rather than committing to a completely straight-faced sweet soul arrangement.

A bit “Leave the Door Open” redux musically — right down to the xylophone that traces the string melody, like that Silk Sonic single deployed so expertly. But the guitar work helps give this one a bit more of its own distinctive character, fuzzy and piercing in the intro, and then moaning like Rose Royce’s “I’m Going Down” on the verses.

The Romantic‘s closer ends things on a pleasant note, eschewing the ’70s soul signifiers of most of the album and flashing back much further to Mars’ original Doo-Wops influences with its sweet harmonies, lilting strings and straightforwardly urgent lyrics. It’s nothing revelatory, but it’s a successful vocal showcase, and should leave listeners with the right feeling — both at the end of the album, and perhaps at the end of live dates on his upcoming stadium tour.

The opener to The Romantic starts off with near-mariachi trumpet and balladic strings, with Bruno Mars almost sounding like Marc Anthony as he croons over lightly brushed drums and gently plucked acoustics: “I would run through a fire/ Just to be by your side.” It’s Mars’ most tender love song yet — also his most dramatic opener since Unorthodox Jukebox‘s “Young Girls” — and you could definitely see it becoming a couples-cam live highlight.

Can Bruno Mars interest you in his spin on Curtis Mayfield’s “Move on Up”? Of course he can: Few, if any soul-pop songs in history have had superior vibes, and Mars is expert tributist enough that he nails the details — the racing drums and backing bongos, the tension-building guitars and righteous horns — without being so heavy-handed with it that you feel like you’re listening to a not-so-thinly-disguised cover. And the breakdown section, where he and his band trade wordless exhortations, take things to the next level just when you hope they would.

Mixing together a blend of slithering grooves from a pair of ’70s Latin rock classics — War’s “Low Rider” and Santana’s cover of Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va” — Mars hits on a new strain of throwback for him on “Something Serious,” and a particularly smart and fun one. He sounds like he’s having an absolute blast belting “You should be my boo thing/ I should be your mans!” over the cowbell and clipped horns. Live, you could definitely see them stretching the breakdown section out to several minutes and multiple solos, whipping the crowd into a frenzy in the process.

While Mars’ return solo single might’ve underwhelmed some hoping for a brand new direction for the pop superstar, a month or so on we can all properly acknowledge that what “I Just Might” lacks in surprises, it more than makes up for in satisfaction. Coming as the third track on The Romantic, it sounds like the album really hitting its stride — and just from the intro, you feel like you’ve been dancing to its guitar chops and sashaying hi-hats at weddings already for your entire life.

“Got my lemon pepper steppers on, ooh girl, you’re in trouble tonight,” Mars and his Hooligans backing band warn over tapping drums and sweetly uneasy strings on “Cha Cha Cha.” The musical reference point here is clearly the lushly ominous Philly soul of The O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers” — right down to the dramatic pause and full-band grunt that leads into the chorus — but of course the vibe here isn’t nearly as paranoid as that classic of soul skepticism, instead using a well-plotted Juvenile lift to capture sweaty dancefloor rapture, before the groove takes flight into pure disco ecstasy in the final minute. Nobody can thread all of this together quite like Bruno Mars.