Thirty combined weeks at the top of the chart (44 if you count “Uptown”). But what I don’t want to have happen is I put it out and say, ‘Damn it, if I’d just done this and this, maybe it would have had a shot.'”īut on the other hand … this is Bruno Mars. “I don’t know if radio is going to play it. “I don’t know if people are going to love this shit,” he says. His insecurity has him second-guessing everything. “Coming off the biggest song of my career, it was super-daunting to come in here,” he says. But if you thought the song’s runaway success would be a confidence-booster, Mars maintains the opposite: It was actually kind of paralyzing. To date, it’s sold more than 12 million copies, been streamed nearly 2 billion times and made several dragons want to retire. “Uptown Funk” cemented Mars’ superstar status, spending 14 weeks at Number One – tying for the second-longest run in chart history – and winning the Grammy for Record of the Year. Sitting in this freezing-ass-cold box trying to come up with songs.” This process is just such a weird process. “My engineer’s going crazy he wants to kill me. “We’re at the point now where we’re losing our fucking minds,” he says. He’s surfed the intervening years like a pro, with two Super Bowl halftime performances (headlining in 2014, and a cameo last February with Coldplay and Beyoncé), not to mention the biggest-selling song of the past few years, his collaboration with Mark Ronson, “Uptown Funk.” But it’s been so long since Mars made an actual album that he kind of forgot how it all works: the doubts the endless tweaking and re-tweaking the cigarettes. The last time Mars dropped an album was December 2012 – four years ago, an eternity for a pop star. The Private Lives of Liza Minnelli (The Rainbow Ends Here) I’m just trying to figure out why I’m tuning out in certain parts.” The groove ain’t right, or we’re not doing something on the chorus – I don’t know the exact math. “There’s just something that’s still not happening for me. “ is a sonic genius, and his version is amazing,” Mars says. The song he needs to finish is one he’s been working on with Skrillex, whom he brought in to add some pizazz to a track he’s been struggling with for months. I want to be finished by the middle of next month. “I’ve got to finish one song and tighten up the bridge on another, and I’m pretty much done. Bruno Mars is in the courtyard – white T-shirt, Versace cap over curls, white slip-on sneakers, no socks – smoking his umpteenth cigarette of the day and trying with every bone in his roughly five-foot-five body to will his third album to completion. It’s late July at Glenwood Place, a recording studio in Burbank, California. “But that New Jack Swing sound brought me so much joy as a kid, so we took that on and did our best to try to get that feeling, that effortless fun.“I’ve been living in this damn box for 18 months!” “We were trying really hard to tap into the ’90s R&B music that we grew up with, and it’s a very fine line-it can get tribute-y, it can sound forced,” Mars adds. Speaking of the 90s sound, he says it’s tricky to get the right sound without seeming cheesy. That’s what we capture, and that’s what I want.” You can tell that we were listening to ’90s R&B. We’re using these vintage instruments and there is a certain sound, but it’s not just regurgitated. That’s why I’m here, because of musicians before me… And I’m not stupid, of course it sounds like. “It’s so easy to say that, but anyone that does that kind of shit has never written a song in their life. When asked about accusations that he’s a “culture vulture,” Mars said: “Man, that pisses me off so much!” he says. In January, Mars told Latina Magazine he stands on the shoulders of black artists as the foundation for his sound. Then I want to go beyond their expectations and fly.” I hope people can see what I was feeling when I made the records. I’m not doing my job unless I leave a piece of me everywhere I go-if you do the right show, it will stay with people and they’ll tell their kids about it. “I’ve seen Prince and Michael Jackson those are nights I will remember forever. Regarding the tour, he says he wants his show to be worth the money, up to par with Prince and Michael Jackson. He recently did an interview and photo spread for WSJ Magazine where he talks about the trek, his album, and being called a “culture vulture.” Before he takes off on his “24K Magic World Tour” later this month, Bruno Mars is doing press for the jaunt and his album of the same name.
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