Back to the Jukebox

This much I gathered about Bruno Mars, 27, during a one-on-one when he came for a concert in April 2011. We met at the poolside of the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu where he did a second show after the first one at the Araneta Coliseum. At that time, he was basking in his Grammy victory for his song Just The Way You Are (from his debut album Doo-Wop & Hooligans).

• Bruno was born Peter Gene Hernandez in Waikiki, Hawaii. His father Pete, a percussion player, is Puerto Rican; and his mother Bernadette, one-time hula dancer who migrated to Hawaii when she was a kid, is Filipino. Dad Pete was a fan of wrestler Bruno Sammartino so he nicknamed his son Bruno, and what about Mars? Said Bruno, “I felt like I didn’t have any pizzazz and a lot of girls say I’m out of this world, so I was like I guess from Mars.”
•  Bruno is an unabashed Elvis Presley fan since he was a kid and a magazine featured as a “Little Elvis.” He did a cameo in the movie Honeymoon in Vegas in 1992. Other artists that he admires: Police, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Queen and Kanye West.
•  No, he dedicated the song Just The Way You Are to no particular girl. “I was just dealing with a bunch of women in my life,” including her four sisters. “It was great growing up with my sisters,” confessed Bruno. “It was different; it was great! I love my sisters. I was not just protective of them, I was over-protective. You can’t help that way because you have to deal with new boyfriend and stuff like that. That’s the hard part of being an only brother.”
• Admitting that he’s a Manny Pacquiao fan, Bruno said that he wanted to sing a duet with him.
•  He considers Grenade the song of his life. Why that song? “Well,” he explained, “because I feel that I let it all out in that song. It unleashes the monster that’s inside of me.”

I just did a second interview with Bruno recently, this time on the phone, and we talked about his recently-released second album titled Unorthodox Jukebox (locally by Warner Music Philippines) which includes Bruno’s collaborations with Jeff Bhasker, Mark Ronson, Emile Haynie, Diplo and The Smeezingtons, plus jazz iconoclast Esperanza Spalding.

Why did you call your album Unorthodox Jukebox?

“I guess I have a love for vintage things — jukeboxes, records, cards. When I was a kid, my father had a jukebox and a whole bunch of records, and I used to stare at the art…because it was like art. You know, the big record is an art form that is slowly going away, eased out by the digital era, although it hasn’t completely gone away. So the jukebox reminds me of a different kind of art.”

What happened to your dad’s jukebox; is it still around?

“Nah! We sold it; it was too heavy.”

Was the jukebox instrumental in making you love music?

“Oh yes, it did. I used to spin this whole bunch of 1950s rock ’n roll sounds. When you play them, there’s some kind of nostalgic sound that comes out of them that is much different from when you download them. You know, the cracks and pops that indicate how many times the records have been played through the years. That sound gives you a special feeling.”

One of the songs on the album is called If I Was a Man. Is that really your answer to Adele’s Someone Like You? Did Adele’s song move you so much as to inspire you to write a song in answer to her?

“Uhm, not really. That song wasn’t inspired by Adele’s song which is a great song. I’ve never recorded a song which has only the piano as accompaniment. The piano gives the purest sound, it’s the purest form of music. It’s only the piano and the vocals, no tricks. It’s a very nice feeling…I feel like I really opened up on that song.”

How different is Unorthodox Jukebox from your first album?

“I guess the best way to describe how different it is, well, it’s been two years later and the new album shows how I am now, how I have grown and how different I am from two years ago. Every album shows how I am growing and every time I do an album I continue to excite myself in the studio and excite myself into creating new music. Maybe two or three years from now when I do my third album, my music may sound different from how it sounds now.”

Another song on the album, Gorilla, is bound to be controversial because of its risqué subject matter. (According to the album backgrounder, “It’s about good old animalistic sex,” with a line that goes, “got a body full of liquor with a cocaine killer.”)

“You know, I think every now and then, as I’ve said, I have to excite myself. So I have to come up with things that I wanna talk about in concerts — you know, stories and scenarios to excite myself. I can always write songs about, yeah, a woman being amazing just the way she is but people might get bored of me real quick and I would get bored of the music that I’m making if it’s the same all the time. It’s just a way to express myself in a different light.”

Aside from getting yourself excited, what inspires or drives you to write songs? Is it falling in love, falling out of love or whatever?

“I mean, yeah, living life, going through whatever one goes through, whether it’s falling in love, falling out of love, breaking up or wishing you were a billionaire, hahahaha!”

Oh, but you are now a billionaire, aren’t you?

“Not yet, hahahaha!”

Anyway, what are your criteria in choosing the songs for your album?

“The songs have to move me; I have to feel something with every song. So if a song like Locked Out of Heaven makes me feel like dancing, then by all means I include it. Or if it breaks my heart, like If I Was a Man, a song that makes me feel some sort of emotion, then I include it. If I feel that way, there’s a good chance that other people might feel the same way. The important trait is always honesty and hopefully you can hear that in my voice and in my lyrics.” 

Which singers and what kind of music move you?

“All kinds of music. I have a producer so I have to listen to all singers. If I am in a club, I wanna hear hip-hop. I like to hear a lot of ‘60s and ‘70s songs, like those of Del Shannon and Stylistics. If I’m in a dancing mood, I listen to dance music. Like this morning, I feel like dancing so I watched a documentary called Searching for Sugar Man (By Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn, winner of Best Documentary Feature at the recent Oscars. — RFL). They were talking about this guy named Sixto Rodriguez, somebody I’d never heard of before; he was from the ‘60s and ‘70s and he was talking about what it was like back then and he moved me. You know, music is all around and it’s supposed to move you, it’s all around you and it’s supposed to just make you feel something. If it doesn’t make you feel something then it’s definitely not good.”

Have you listened to any Filipino song and how did you feel about it?

“Yeah, my mom used to sing Filipino songs. Unfortunately, my Filipino is not too good. I remember that Filipino music has great melodies.”

And when are you coming back to the Philippines?

“Very soon. I can’t wait! I’m gonna have a blast. We had a blast the last time I was there, remember? Next time it would be different. Hi to my Filipino fans. I’ll see you soon!”

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