New Release Friday: Bruno Mars' 10-Year Gap Filled by 'The Romantic'

BRUNO MARS: THE ROMANTIC

SCORE: 65/100

After a ten-year hiatus from a proper album release and his ventures with Anderson .Paak as Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars has returned with The Romantic, an album that was years in the making and his first solo album since 2016. 

The songs on The Romantic are as one would expect from a modern Bruno Mars project - romantic and sappy with soft balladry and very solid vocal performances; but the musical palate is not highly varied or striking. There's not a sense of memorability within the album, but it marks itself as a solid return that blends Latin pop sounds with R&B and pop soul. 

It's a step down from his catchy, funky hits from previous albums, but it's a decently palatable album with nothing bad present on its nine-track runtime. The songs are very generic and standard, and it's unfortunate to see such a massive talent in the music industry creating such bland, soulless "soul" music. There's nothing soulful about The Romantic, and although the album isn't too grating, it feels like the kind of music you would hear while on hold. The songs are standard and provide almost no depth or layering, and despite a generally pleasant array of soundscapes and instrumentals, the album still feels entirely lacking in depth or soul, and it's the exact kind of mainstream bland that the music industry has been suffering from for years now. 

Unfortunately, Mars continues his one-note reputation with this album, sinking his discography down and making a sad step after such incredible beginnings - with this album being incredibly boring, almost strikingly so. There's almost nothing worth coming back to on this album, and the masses can get ready to hear 'I Just Might' on the radio for the next decade. 

By all means, The Romantic isn't a bad album. It's a solid album with songs that are not hard to listen to at all, but the sound of the album overall is incredibly dull - meaning that it truly isn't worth the time outside of a few songs, if any. It's the exact kind of radio lulling that was widely expected, and it's an unfortunate decline in quality when compared to Mars' earliest projects. 

There's nothing new offered by Mars on this album - and for a ten year gap and so many years of delay, this album wasn't made worthwhile at all, and it will ultimately go down as one of the most underdeveloped and underwhelming albums to be released by a big star this year.