![]() ![]() ![]() In a manner not dissimilar to Kanye West, he had to work hard on other people’s music to get his start (among many, many others, he co-wrote Cee-Lo Green’s ‘F**k You’).īy 2010, he’d appeared as a guest vocalist on a couple of gigantic hit singles – B.O.B’s ‘Nothin’ On You’, Travie McCoy’s ‘Billionaire’ – and in their slipstream immediately launched his solo career with ‘Just The Way You Are’, then ‘Grenade’, then debut album ‘Doo-Wops & Hooligans’. Mars is, it has to be said, not your average kind of pop star. And that story just kind of inspired me and reminded me of what I want to do and the kind of music I want to write.” But the DJ drops The Gap Band’s ‘Outstanding’, and James says all of sudden he’d never seen anything like it: everybody’s just rushed to the dancefloor, guys are holding girls’ hands, singing to them…. The girls are taking pictures of themselves and posting them up. “He said he was at an after-party – it was the Grammys or something – and everybody’s hugged up against the wall, everyone’s being too cool, everyone’s being tough. He talks, too, about a story collaborator James Fauntleroy told him. ![]() It was cool to fall in love and smile and flirt on the dancefloor.” It was cool to be joyous, to have fun and wear some flashy s**t. I think that the reason why that music resonates so much for me is that it made it OK to dance – it was cool to dance. “Those ’90s songs are what I was singing to get the girls in school, the songs that the girls like, what we were dancing to as children. “That was my childhood that’s why I fell in love with music,” he continues. It’s everywhere, on ‘Chunky’ (“Looking for them girls with the big old hoops”), on ‘That’s What I Like’ (“Sex by the fire at night”, apparently), on ‘Straight Up And Down’ (“Your booty deserves a celebration”), on ‘Calling All My Ladies’ (obviously) and on ‘Finesse’ (ditto). At just 35 minutes and nine songs long (“If I can’t pull you in with nine songs, I’m not gonna pull you in with 19!” reasons its creator), it’s also an album that’s quite clearly influenced by the music that soundtracked Mars’ youth – namely ’90s R&B.Īnd in keeping with this influence, all of its songs are about… sex, sex and sex. A couple of ballads aside (‘Versace On The Floor’, which you will have heard, and ‘Too Good To Say Goodbye’), it’s a full-on party album. It’s true that the spirit of ‘Uptown Funk’ has definitely been carried forward into ‘24k Magic’. I’d say that it was always in the back of my mind when we were doing it. “So if you hear the same spirit in that song, that’s why. “We wrote ‘24K Magic’ when Uptown Funk was Number One,” he notes. ![]()
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December 2022
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