"I just have to open it up." If Mars is obsessive about songcraft, it's probably because that's how he first broke into the business. James Fauntleroy, who worked on 24K Magic, is a Grammy-winning songwriter and producer who's known Mars since the early days. He starts with the original demo, which he calls the "poolside version." (It does have a strong piña colada vibe.) The lyrics feature Mars telling his girl that they can "fly through a storm on a unicorn ... Mars plays the next version, which features the same lyrics but a more epic musical track. If we're gonna really, dramatically slow things down, I've got to be singing some shit." So they started from scratch and wrote a whole melody.
He plays the most recent iteration, a Boyz II Men–ish anthem that climaxes with an indelible hook: "Let's just kiss till we're naked/Versace on the floor." "At a certain point," says Mars, "I needed to stop telling you we're gonna get down, and just get down."It's Mars' MO to tear songs apart like this. ") Meanwhile, his hit "Locked Out of Heaven" started as a cha-cha-style duet, à la Santana's "Smooth." Mars keeps that version on his laptop to remind himself that it's a process, and not to freak out.
His "Grenade," which was Number One for four weeks, was originally British Invasion–style Sixties jangle pop, until Mars realized at the last minute that "it sucked" and revamped it just before its release. Even "Uptown Funk" was almost thrown out several times. He turns to his laptop and plays a messy early version, featuring an inexplicable hard-rock breakdown and a chorus with Mars shouting, "Burn this motherfucker down! "And then one day it was like, ' Maybe we don't have a chorus.' " And sometimes it's a single word that can make or break a song.
' "But [Adele] was so gangster about it," he says. That's what it has to be.' And she was right.
It's this grand word that makes the song bigger because no one says it. It's not 'what boyfriends-and-girlfriends do' – it's this over-the-top 'lovers.' Sometimes I play it on the piano, and I look forward to singing that part.
"Coming off the biggest song of my career, it was super-daunting to come in here," he says. "I don't know if people are going to love this shit," he says. But what I don't want to have happen is I put it out and say, ' Damn it, if I'd just done this and this, maybe it would have had a shot.'" But on the other hand ... Two albums, 26 million in sales worldwide, four Grammys and counting. His girlfriend, model Jessica Caban, is already long asleep, so Mars sits in the driveway by himself for another half-hour, listening and re-listening to today's mix.
So when you ask him if he's usually right when it comes to these things – if he has pretty good instincts for what makes a song a hit or not – he can't help but swag out. The driveway is where he does some of his best work: "We've worked on songs till 3 or 4 in the morning, like, ' This is gonna be the first single!
"There's nothing more joyous for me than those school dances," Mars says. in the morning, the band comes out, fucking dipped in Versace. And then the flyest lead singer the world has ever seen comes on and starts singing some shit." The next day, Mars is back in the studio to fix some of the mistakes he heard last night.
"Slow-dancing at the Valentine's Day banquet with the girl you have a crush on, and the DJ spins ' Before I Let You Go,' by Blackstreet. First on the agenda is a song called "Finesse." "There's just some things fucking the groove up," he says.
"It's late July at Glenwood Place, a recording studio in Burbank, California. "The song he needs to finish is one he's been working on with Skrillex, whom he brought in to add some pizazz to a track he's been struggling with for months.
Bruno Mars is in the courtyard – white T-shirt, Versace cap over curls, white slip-on sneakers, no socks – smoking his umpteenth cigarette of the day and trying with every bone in his roughly five-foot-five body to will his third album to completion."It's right there, man," says Mars, 31. "[Skrillex] is a sonic genius, and his version is amazing," Mars says.
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