Bruno Mars, one of the most popular music artists of the 21st century, released his newest solo album on Feb. 27, called “The Romantic.” During these past few years, Bruno Mars has gone and done many features with artists like Lady Gaga, ROSÉ, and Sexyy Red after not releasing solo music for ten years.
Mars released “I Just Might” as his first and only single for his album on Jan. 9, 2026. The song is about how Mars fell in love with a girl on the dance floor. It incorporates Bruno Mars’ classic style of pop and R&B. The lyrics of the song isn’t anything special, it could only be described as Bruno Mars covering a Bruno Mars song. The song feels safe and doesn’t push the limits of what Bruno Mars can do.
The album starts with “Risk It All”, a latin inspired track. This style carries through the album though it is stronger at times than others. The song is simply a basic love song about falling in love with someone. The song doesn’t have much to it. The chorus is three verses that lack any substance lyrically.
The next song on the album “Cha Cha Cha” completely abandoned the latin theme with a more western sounding start that gets lost by the end of the song. The song is about falling in love on the dance floor just like “I Just Might.” These songs beginning back to back on the album feels muddy and repetitive,
The writing on the album isn’t anything special. Its basic comments of falling in love, to ending up in an argument, to finally resolve the issues. There isn’t anything wrong with this style of structure when done well, but “The Romantic” boils it down to kindergarten level of feelings and depth.
Lyrics like “I’ma love you like you’ve never been loved before/ On my soul,” “You and I will fall in love all over again, yeah” and “I ain’t never seen beauty likе this/ I was blind, but now I see” are juvenile compared to his other works.
Bruno Mars has some interesting choices when it comes to the soundscape.“Why You Wanna Fight?” has a xylophone sound in the background during the pre-chorus and chorus. It doesn’t match with any of the other songs or makes sense in the context of the album. In “Nothing Left” there’s a strong electric guitar which comes out of nowhere. The continuity is truly lost between songs.
“Dance With Me” is the final song on the album. It’s a classic pop ballad that gets boring after 30 seconds of listening. Bruno Mars’ voice does sound nice. This song proves that he can sing well but all the others don’t show that. Albums should have a strong ending that wraps everything up nicely but “Dance With Me” doesn’t tie anything in beside the talk of dancing like the early songs on the album.
The album was a disappointment. Bruno Mars gave himself ten years to play with sound and push his songwriting ability, but this project doesn’t show it at all.
