BRUNO MARS – UNORTHODOX JUKEBOX

Listening to Bruno Mars’s debut album, like a lot of people, I was expecting him to replicate the efforts he made on his first album and aim for the mainstream audience. However, ‘UNORTHODOX JUKEBOX’ offers a lot of candy in one bag. The album, in my opinion, while only having 2 potential singles, and may cause Atlantic Records to shed some tears is still a strong album.

The album feels like Bruno Mars took charge of this album and wanted to move away from the darkness of the mainstream and experiment a bit more than usual. Well when I say a bit I mean he’s incorporated some nice New Wave Gary Numan style synthesizers into the opening track ‘Young Girls’ whilst sipping his Pina Colada on the beach with all his ‘Doo Wops and Hooligans’ money feeling like he should write a reggae influenced number called ‘Show me’ and slap that on the album.

During the album you come across an epic crossbreed of genres. It’s like Bruno Mars jumping into his dad’s shoes and robbing some disco from the late 70’s bringing it back to 2012 adding some of Bruno Mars’s signature funk and coming out with ‘Treasure’ Don’t be mistaken though, the song is a great listen. Just like ‘Locked out of Heaven’ the lead single of the album, reaching number two in the UK and has been praised highly by the critics for being funky and catchy with a running time of 3 and a half minutes, perfect for Nick Grimshaws new mainstream show every morning from 6am on BBC Radio 1.

Question is does Bruno Mars read 50 shades of Grey? Well that’s what I thought when I heard the third track ‘Gorilla.’ If this is the next single, and I think it should, it’s going to be like Lou Reeds hit ‘Walk on the wild side’ all over again. Within the first verse ‘You got your legs up in the sky with the devil in your eyes, let me hear you say you want it all’ Well what can you say to that? That’s definitely going to stir the whole ‘Bruno Mars is gay’ situation up.

The only downside to the album is the fifth track ‘When I was your man.’ Its not even that the song is bad, it just comes across as a mock attempt at his smash single ‘Just the way your are’ which is unfortunate because the song did almost make me cry.

Overall, the album isn’t going to sell as well as Doo Wops and Hooligans but Bruno is definitely allowing himself to fulfil his urges to develop as a character and an artist and I think the album does work well as a whole and is a great buy. Would definitely recommend it to a fan that already likes Bruno Mars.

8 out of 10

Samuel Dewar (Sedaris Arcadia)

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