On Friday February 27th, Bruno Mars made his long awaited return to the music industry with his new album “The Romantic”. This is his first solo project in 10 years after he released his triple platinum, Grammy Album of the Year winning project “24k Magic” back in 2016. This album heavily tackles the love song route, with every song detailing the feelings that Bruno has for an unknown woman. With influences dipping the album into tones of latin, pop, and blues, ‘The Romantic’ is a beautiful album that serenades every listener.
The production on the album was a very detailed process. With Bruno Mars himself as the main producer fronting most of the work load, he also had a great supporting cast around him. Executive producer D’Mile, assistant engineers Alex Resoagli, Anthony Masino, Bryce Bordone, and Gabriel Roth and the mixer Serban Ghenea came together to create the masterpiece that was this album. This team brings together many different styles of production with each person specializing in different things such as horns, drums, and the beat itself.
As Bruno Mars was the main vocalist and creator of the album, there was an incredibly talented team behind him. For example, on the first song featured on the album ‘Risk It All’ Bruno brought in people who are experts in all different types of instruments to curate the blend heard from this song. From violinists, trumpeters, and keyboarders, the players created an end product that soothes the ears. This was all headed by conductor Larry Gold.
As for the lyrics, Bruno taps into many different styles of vocals for this project. Across all the songs on the album, he floats between a more pop oriented sound on songs like “I Just Might” and “On My Soul”, and a more emotional bluesy vocal on “Nothing Left” and “Dance With Me.” Across the whole album there is limited help from background vocals by James Fauntleroy and Phillip Lawrence.
All in all, ‘The Romantic’ was an incredible addition to Bruno Mars’ stellar discography of albums. I feel even though it was a solid 4/5 stars, it is Bruno’s weakest installment to date. In the grand ranking of his albums, I’d put it ‘Unorthodox Jukebox’, ‘Doo-Wops and Hooligans’, ‘24k Magic’, and then ‘The Romantic’. This is less of a discredit to this new album and more of a tell on how good his discography truly is.
