Whenever someone speaks about timeless music, ingenious lyrics, killer stage presence and Michael Jackson-like high pitched vocals, those statements tend not to describe anyone in our digitalized auto-tuned music society. But for Peter Gene Hernandez, (better known as Bruno Mars) these attributes come seamlessly easy. Growing up in a musical family in Honolulu, Hawaii, Mars began singing as far as he can remember. At 5 years old he played “Little Elvis” in the movie “Honeymoon in Vegas”.
Fast Forwarding 20 years, he is now a Grammy Award winning artist who writes for industry big shots such as Cee-Lo Green, B.O.B, Travis McCoy, Brandy, Flo-Rida, Adam Levine (lead singer of Maroon 5) and Sean Kingston. Not to mention the fact that he has his own #1 Billboard and iTunes hits: “Just The Way You Are” and “Grenade”. In May 2010, in anticipation of his rookie album “Doo Wops & Hooligans”, he released an on-line album or Electronic Product (“EP”), “It’s Better If You Don’t Understand”, which consisted of 3 songs from the Doo Wops & Hooligans CD.
When Doo Wops & Hooligans was released on October 4, 2010, it received rave reviews from music critics all over. Jody Rosen from Rolling Stone called the album “the year’s finest debut”. About.com’s Bill Lamb wrote “one of the top debut albums of the year”, and Entertainment Weekly’s Leah Greenblatt gave the album a B+ rating, for its “”instant-access melodies” and “…dance-floor swagger”.
Due to his album’s commercial success, Mars has been on a musical tear. “Just The Way You Are” sold 3 times Platinum. His single “Grenade” sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Mars was the second most-nominated artist for the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, with seven nominations. He also made history by being the first debut artist in the last 13 years to have two consecutive #1 singles on the Billboard chart. Bruno is only the 6th male artist of all times to reach this achievement. He also has the #1 selling album in most of Europe and Canada.
This is quite an achievement for a 10-track debut CD. I think that’s not a bad start. And by the looks of things, his future looks promising. If you look past the diluted sounds of commercial pop, feathery-light, wisp voices of the belly-button, booty-shaking female singers, there is real talent on this earth, coming from Mars. Bruno Mars.
Check Out His Free Mixtape “Lost Planet”
By Mitch A Mark
