The story of Bruno Mars

Little Elvis of Waikiki

Bruno Mars was born Peter Gene Hernandez on the eighth of October 1985 in Honolulu, and he grew up in the Waikiki neighborhood. His father Peter, a percussionist from Brooklyn of Puerto Rican and Jewish descent, had moved to Hawaii and played drums in a Polynesian revue at a Waikiki hotel. That is where he met Bernadette, a hula dancer and singer who had come to Hawaii from the Philippines as a girl. Their son was one of six children. When he was two, his father started calling him Bruno, because the chubby toddler reminded him of the famous wrestler Bruno Sammartino. The nickname stuck for life. The name Mars came much later.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Hernandez family ran a show band called the Love Notes, and music was the family business. Bruno's father loved doo-wop and Little Richard, and an uncle who worked as an Elvis impersonator encouraged the little boy to copy the King. By the age of four Bruno was performing with the family band several nights a week in Waikiki, including at the Sheraton, dressed as a pint sized Elvis for the tourists. In 1990 a local paper called MidWeek featured him as Little Elvis. On Christmas Day that year, aged five, he sang a Christmas song during the halftime show of the Aloha Bowl on national television. It was his first halftime show, and not his last.[1] [2] [3]

Little Elvis soon went beyond Hawaii. In 1992 he had a small cameo in the Hollywood comedy Honeymoon in Vegas, starring Nicolas Cage, a film packed with Elvis impersonators. Around the age of six he also appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show, and he was interviewed by Pauly Shore on MTV. Through grade school he played two shows a night with the family band, singing songs by Frankie Lymon and Little Anthony. At home he had a small drum kit, a guitar, a piano and percussion, and he taught himself to play them all. He later said this upbringing taught him to entertain everyone who walked in, whatever their age or background.[1] [2] [3]

When Bruno was about twelve, his parents divorced and the family show came to an end. His sisters went to live with their mother, and Bruno and his brother Eric stayed with their father, whose businesses were failing. For a time they were effectively homeless. They slept in a car, on rooftops, and for about two years in a one room shack inside Paradise Park, a bird zoo where his father had worked, after the park closed down. Years later he took a 60 Minutes crew back to the ruins and remembered all three of them sharing one bed. He called those memories some of the best, because they had each other.[1] [2] [3]

At President Theodore Roosevelt High School in Honolulu, Bruno sang with a group called the School Boys, who opened for his father's new band with songs by the Isley Brothers and the Temptations. He also picked up the guitar, inspired by Jimi Hendrix, and earned money impersonating Michael Jackson, for seventy five dollars a show, including as an opening act for a magic show. Then one of his sisters, living in Los Angeles, played a demo of his to Mike Lynn, the head of artists and repertoire at Dr. Dre's label Aftermath. Lynn told him to come to Los Angeles. In 2003, shortly after finishing high school, he packed up and left Hawaii.[1] [2]

The Hollywood hustle

Los Angeles was a shock. The young singer lived on Mansfield Avenue in Hollywood and was stunned by how rough it was. In Hawaii he had always paid the rent as a working musician, but now his phone was getting cut off. He bluffed his way into a job as a DJ for seventy five dollars cash, even though he had no idea how to DJ, and lost it quickly. He also chose a stage name. He kept his father's nickname Bruno and added Mars, joking that girls said he was out of this world. He said the name also helped him avoid being boxed in as a Latin artist.[1] [2]

In 2004 he signed to Motown Records, which should have been a dream. It went nowhere, and he was dropped within a year. He later admitted that at eighteen he had no songwriting or recording experience, and little to write about. That failure changed his direction. In 2005 he signed a music publishing deal with the producers Steve Lindsey and Cameron Strang at Westside Independent. Lindsey became a mentor to him and to two other young writers, Brody Brown and Jeff Bhasker, lecturing them on what makes a hit pop song. To pay the bills, Mars played covers around town in a band called Sex Panther, with Bhasker and his brother Eric.[1] [2] [3]

In late 2006 a drummer and producer named Keith Harris told a struggling writer named Philip Lawrence that he had to meet a phenomenally talented kid from Hawaii. Lawrence was broke and had no car, and was wary, because everyone in Los Angeles claimed to have the next big thing. Harris offered to cover his costs, and Lawrence asked for just five dollars back for the bus. The session was with Bruno Mars, and the two became a songwriting team. Lawrence also introduced him to Aaron Bay-Schuck at Atlantic Records, who wanted to sign him on the spot. The label, though, took about three years to commit.[1] [2]

By 2008 Mars and Lawrence were close to giving up and going home. Then Brandon Creed, who was looking for songs for a reunited Menudo, heard a track called Lost that they had written for Mars himself. When they hesitated, Creed offered twenty thousand dollars, and the stunned pair told him he could have that song and anything else he needed. The money kept them in Los Angeles, and Creed went on to manage Mars for nine years. The duo decided to write and produce for other artists, and helped create Flo Rida's 2009 smash Right Round, which Mars called their first real taste of a hit.[1] [2] [3]

The team grew into a trio when Lawrence connected Mars with Ari Levine, a producer who ran a small studio called Levcon. One day, sitting broke in a car, Mars and Lawrence decided to start producing their own tracks, and Levine brought the equipment and the drum programming skills. They called themselves the Smeezingtons and worked more than ten hours a day. Their early productions included the Sugababes single Get Sexy and K'naan's Wavin' Flag, which Coca-Cola used as the theme for its coverage of the 2010 World Cup. Suddenly the phone was ringing, and labels wanted what the Smeezingtons were making.[1] [2]

The voice on everybody's hook

In the summer of 2009 the Smeezingtons were booked for a week of writing sessions for Lupe Fiasco, B.o.B and Travie McCoy. Mars and Lawrence would hum melodies, and Aaron Bay-Schuck pushed them to develop the best ones. One became Nothin' on You. Mars later said he borrowed the feel of the hook from Prince's The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. The song was first meant for Lupe Fiasco, but it went to B.o.B instead. Mars was only supposed to sing a guide vocal, but his performance was so charming that the label kept it. Released in December 2009, it went to number one in both America and Britain.[1] [2]

Nothin' on You also brought one of the lowest moments of his career. Mars later said that while the song was being shopped around, one industry decision maker suggested giving it to a blue eyed blonde singer instead, because of how he looked. He said it made him feel like a mutant, as if he was not even in the room. Record executives, he said, kept asking which radio stations would play him, and whether black or white listeners would buy his records. Growing up in Hawaii, where nearly everyone was mixed, he had hardly thought about race until he moved to the mainland.[1] [2] [3]

Another of those 2009 melodies became Billionaire for Travie McCoy. The idea came to Mars in London, where his label had sent him and Ari Levine to work, giving them each about two hundred and forty pounds to live on for eleven days. Walking the streets broke, he came up with the hook about wanting to be rich. McCoy first turned it down, worried about singing about money during a recession, then wrote verses about what he would do for others with a fortune. Released in March 2010, it went top five in America and Britain. That August came CeeLo Green's hit Forget You, which the Smeezingtons wrote and produced.[1] [2] [3]

Now the singer on the hooks wanted his own turn. In May 2010 Mars released a debut EP called It's Better If You Don't Understand, and on the twentieth of July came his first solo single, Just the Way You Are. It began with an idea from the producers Needlz and Khalil Walton, which Mars and Lawrence built a chorus around, and it had been offered to Lupe Fiasco and CeeLo Green before Mars decided to keep it. It went to number one in America, Britain, Canada and Australia. The debut album, Doo-Wops and Hooligans, followed in October 2010, produced mostly by the Smeezingtons, and reached number one in Britain.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Right in the middle of that breakthrough, trouble arrived. On the nineteenth of September 2010, after a nightclub performance at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Mars was arrested in a bathroom with a small bag of cocaine, about two and a half grams. He faced a felony charge that could in theory have meant prison. In February 2011, just days after winning his first Grammy, he pleaded guilty under a deal. He was fined two thousand dollars, ordered to do two hundred hours of community service and to attend drug counselling. In January 2012 a judge dismissed the case after his lawyer said he had done even more service than required.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Doo-Wops and Hooligans

The second single, Grenade, almost did not happen in the form fans know. It grew from an unreleased song by another band that Benny Blanco played to Mars, and the lyric about extreme devotion took months to finish. The original arrangement was a brighter, faster, Sixties style jangle pop song. Mars later admitted it sounded terrible live, so he stripped it down with guitar and piano, and the team re-recorded the whole thing two days before the album was due. The gamble paid off. Grenade became his third American number one and topped the charts in more than a dozen countries, and it was one of the best selling downloads of 2011.[1] [2]

The Lazy Song came from a day when Mars, Lawrence and Levine were burned out and did not feel like working, with K'naan hanging around the studio. It topped the charts in Britain and Denmark. Mars disliked the video his label made for it, so they gave him a couple of thousand dollars to make his own. He bought chimpanzee masks, hired the dance crew Poreotics, and shot a single take video in his underwear with his friend Cameron Duddy. They used the tenth of twelve takes. Oddly, in a 2013 GQ interview, Mars said he did not even like the song. Another album track, Talking to the Moon, became a hit only in Brazil, after a TV soap opera used it.[1] [2]

Mars built his live career the old fashioned way. He opened for Maroon 5, co-headlined in Europe with Travie McCoy, and then headlined the Doo-Wops and Hooligans Tour from late 2010 to early 2012, plus a joint tour with Janelle Monáe called Hooligans in Wondaland. He turned down offers to open arena tours and chose theaters and ballrooms instead, earning less but winning fans up close. His band, the Hooligans, included his brother Eric on drums, bassist Jamareo Artis, a horn section and Philip Lawrence on backing vocals. They sang, played and danced in sync, a soul revue built for a new century.[1] [2]

At the Grammys in February 2011 Mars won his first award, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for Just the Way You Are, among seven nominations that included Record of the Year twice, for Nothin' on You and Forget You. A year later Doo-Wops and Hooligans was up for Album of the Year. He also sang on hits for others, including Lighters with Eminem's duo Bad Meets Evil and Young, Wild and Free with Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa. In late 2011 he released It Will Rain for the Twilight film Breaking Dawn Part One, and it reached number three in America. The kid who had been dropped by Motown was now everywhere.[1] [2] [3]

Unorthodox Jukebox and a mother's loss

For his second album Mars wanted freedom to try anything, from hip-hop to rock to soul. He brought in Mark Ronson, Jeff Bhasker, Paul Epworth, Emile Haynie and Diplo, and described it as inviting master chefs into the kitchen with no plan. Locked Out of Heaven, heavily inspired by the Police, began as a cha-cha style duet that sounded like Santana's Smooth, before a jam in New York turned it into something tighter. Mars kept the old version on his laptop to remind himself that songs take time. Released in October 2012, it spent six weeks at number one in America. Unorthodox Jukebox arrived that December and later reached number one.[1] [2] [3]

The next single was a surprise, a stark ballad with just piano and voice called When I Was Your Man, about a man realizing too late how he failed the woman he loved. Mars said it was the most honest thing he had ever sung, and Philip Lawrence said the subject came from real life. Mars admitted he had never been so nervous about a song. It went to number one, only the second American chart topper built on nothing but piano and vocals. It was his fifth number one, and among male artists only Elvis Presley had reached five faster. Treasure, a disco flavored single, followed and won a Video Music Award for its choreography.[1] [2] [3]

Then came the worst day of his life. At the end of May 2013 Mars was performing on German television. His mother texted him that he looked tired and needed rest. When he landed back in Los Angeles, he got the call. Bernadette Hernandez had suffered a brain aneurysm and was unconscious in a hospital in Honolulu. He never left the airport, flying straight to Hawaii, but she did not wake up. She died on the first of June 2013 at Queens Medical Center, aged fifty five. Mars said years later that he still did not know how to handle it, and that a piece of his heart was gone forever.[1] [2] [3]

His world tour was due to start just weeks later. Mars said he prayed about it and felt his mother would want him to keep going. The Moonshine Jungle Tour opened in June 2013 and ran until October 2014, grossing over a hundred and fifty million dollars. Billboard named him its Artist of the Year for 2013, and NPR's Ann Powers called him the most valuable pop historian of the moment, praising how he treated his band as equals on stage. That summer he also won Best Male Video at the MTV Video Music Awards, which led to an unexpected public rant from Kanye West.[1] [2] [3]

On the second of February 2014 Mars headlined the Super Bowl halftime show at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers as guests. He was the first headliner under thirty in a decade, and the NFL did not pay him a fee for it. He opened with a drum solo on a kit decorated in honor of his mother, modeled on the tattoo on his arm. The broadcast drew about a hundred and fifteen million viewers, a halftime record at the time. Ticket prices for his tour soared afterwards, and a Hawaii state senator even proposed an anti scalping measure nicknamed the Bruno Mars Act.[1] [2] [3]

Uptown Funk and 24K Magic

Uptown Funk started as a jam Mars and his band played on tour. In a session at his studio with Mark Ronson and Jeff Bhasker, Mars sat at the drums and they worked it up, but finishing it took about seven months of stressful sessions in Los Angeles, London, Memphis, New York, Toronto and Vancouver. One version had a hard rock breakdown, and the song was nearly thrown away more than once. Ronson got so wound up chasing the guitar part that he passed out during one session. He finally nailed it in Toronto, playing in front of the Hooligans after eighty two takes. Philip Lawrence sang the famous bass line with his voice.[1] [2]

Released in November 2014 as a Mark Ronson single featuring Bruno Mars, Uptown Funk spent fourteen weeks at number one in America and seven in Britain. The label had wanted to call it Just Watch. It won Record of the Year at the 2016 Grammys, and Billboard later named it the best performing song of the entire decade. Success brought claims too. In 2015 the writers of the Gap Band's Oops Up Side Your Head were added as co-writers after a claim over similarities, reportedly taking seventeen percent of the publishing. Later lawsuits from the bands Collage and the Sequence, and from the owners of a Zapp song, were dropped or settled.[1] [2] [3]

A week before those Grammys, Mars returned to the Super Bowl as a guest of Coldplay, alongside Beyoncé. He had first said no, feeling he had just done it, but Chris Martin invited him to his Malibu studio, pitched the idea of Bruno and Beyoncé doing Uptown Funk, then filmed a video message and texted it to Beyoncé on the spot. She said yes. Mars remembered them both dieting and stressing before the show, until Beyoncé calmly ate a bag of Cheetos, saying there was nothing more they could do. In 2016 Mars also parted ways with his longtime manager Brandon Creed, after nine years together.[1] [2] [3]

His third album, 24K Magic, was built to recreate the early Nineties R&B he danced to at Hawaii school dances, the sound of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Teddy Riley, Babyface and New Edition. He formed a new writing trio, Shampoo Press and Curl, with Lawrence and Brody Brown, and brought in James Fauntleroy and the Stereotypes. Recording in Burbank took about twenty two months of fourteen hour days, with a studio dress code of fine clothes and jewelry instead of sweatpants. Finesse went through around twenty versions. Released in November 2016 with just nine songs, the album gave him another number one single in That's What I Like.[1] [2] [3]

In late December 2016 Mars began a residency for MGM Resorts, at MGM National Harbor near Washington and at the new Park Theater in Las Vegas, where fans had to lock their phones in pouches. The 24K Magic World Tour of 2017 and 2018 grossed more than three hundred million dollars. At the Grammys in January 2018 he won all six awards he was up for, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year for 24K Magic and Song of the Year for That's What I Like. Only Carole King had previously won record and song of the year with two different songs from the same album.[1] [2] [3]

Backlash, then Silk Sonic

The Grammy sweep drew a backlash. Billboard argued that in a year when major rap albums and female artists were overlooked, Mars might have been better off losing, and noted his speeches made no mention of the bigger debate. Weeks later, in March 2018, the writer and activist Seren Sensei said on a web series called The Grapevine that Mars was a cultural appropriator who profited from black music while being racially ambiguous. The clip set off a fierce online argument. Mars had long credited his heroes, and in a 2021 interview he said he was only here because of James Brown, Prince and Michael Jackson.[1] [2] [3]

Mars met Anderson .Paak in 2017, while they were touring together on the European leg of the 24K Magic tour, and they quickly became friends. Backstage they tried turning in jokes into songs, and the first thing they wrote began with the phrase smoking out the window. The tour ended and the idea went on the shelf. In February 2020, just before the pandemic, Mars listened back and called .Paak to the studio. .Paak later said he turned up drunk. Mars also found a new partner, the producer D'Mile, after hearing his work on Instagram, and the lockdown gave them time to write every day.[1] [2]

On the twenty sixth of February 2021 Mars and .Paak announced their duo, Silk Sonic, with the funk legend Bootsy Collins as guest host. Bootsy was also the one who named them. Their first single, Leave the Door Open, came out on the fifth of March 2021, a lush Seventies Philadelphia soul slow jam, and it went to number one in America. Mars said arguing over its bridge almost broke the band up. The album An Evening with Silk Sonic followed in November 2021 and reached number two. In 2022 Leave the Door Open won four Grammys, including Record and Song of the Year.[1] [2] [3]

Silk Sonic took their act to Las Vegas with a residency at Park MGM from February 2022, and opened the 2022 Grammys with a song called 777. Then they did something unusual. The duo declined to submit their album for the next year's Grammys, even though it was seen as a strong contender for Album of the Year, with Mars saying they would be crazy to ask for more. Around the same years he also recorded Please Me with Cardi B, donated a million dollars to help MGM employees hit by the pandemic, and sold part of his song catalog to Warner Chappell.[1] [2] [3]

Stadiums, a war, and two giant duets

From October 2022 Mars played a loose run of stadium shows around the world, later grouped as Bruno Mars Live, while keeping his Las Vegas residency going. The numbers were enormous. In Seoul he drew over a hundred thousand people across two nights. In January 2024 he became the first artist since Michael Jackson to sell out seven shows at the Tokyo Dome. In Brazil later that year he played fourteen shows, breaking a record for an international act that the Mexican group RBD had set in 2006. All told, the tour grossed more than three hundred million dollars.[1] [2]

The tour also collided with history. On the fourth of October 2023 Mars played the first of two sold out shows at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv. The second was set for Saturday the seventh of October. That morning Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel, and within hours the concert was cancelled. By two in the afternoon Mars and his crew of about sixty were at Ben Gurion Airport, boarding a flight to Athens. They left their production gear behind, and a show planned for Doha the next day was cancelled too, with DJ Snake taking his place.[1] [2]

In March 2024 a report by the news channel NewsNation claimed that Mars owed MGM around fifty million dollars in gambling debts, and suggested that was why he kept playing the residency. MGM Resorts flatly denied it, saying he had no debt with the company and that any speculation otherwise was completely false. Mars later poked fun at the rumor. In February 2024 he opened his own lounge at the Bellagio, the Pinky Ring, named after a line from 24K Magic, with the Hooligans playing every night for the first two weeks. His signature Fender guitar had come out a few months earlier.[1] [2] [3]

Then came two duets that took over the planet. Mars had started a song in 2021 about wanting to be beside someone if the world was ending, and in 2024 he played it for Lady Gaga, who finished it with him in one late night session. Die with a Smile came out on the sixteenth of August 2024, spent eighteen weeks at number one on Billboard's Global 200, and won a Grammy. Two months later came APT. with Rosé of Blackpink, built on a Korean drinking game she taught him. It topped charts in more than fifty countries and was named the best selling global single of 2025.[1] [2] [3]

The duets made Mars one of the most streamed artists on the planet. In early 2025 he became the first artist to pass a hundred and fifty million monthly listeners on Spotify, and he became the first act to spend thirty weeks at number one on the Billboard Global 200. APT. earned three Grammy nominations for the 2026 ceremony, including Record and Song of the Year, and won International Song of the Year at the 2026 Brit Awards. Mars also released Fat Juicy and Wet with Sexyy Red, and was the featured artist in a season of the video game Fortnite Festival.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Romantic

On the fifth of January 2026, Mars posted four words on social media saying his album was done. Two days later he revealed its name, The Romantic, and its cover. The lead single, I Just Might, arrived on the ninth of January and debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It was his tenth American number one, and his first ever to debut at the top. That made him only the fourth solo male artist with ten or more number ones, alongside Drake, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. Later that month he was named the ambassador for Record Store Day 2026.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Romantic came out on the twenty seventh of February 2026, his first solo album in more than nine years. It had just nine songs and about thirty one minutes of music, all produced by Mars with D'Mile, and no guest stars. The second single, Risk It All, turned into a Latin bolero with mariachi horns, a nod to his heritage. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with a hundred and eighty six thousand units, his first number one album in nearly thirteen years, helped by his best vinyl week ever. Critics were divided, praising his voice while some, like the Guardian's Alexis Petridis, found the songwriting lazy.[1] [2] [3]

On the tenth of April 2026 Las Vegas threw Bruno Mars a party. He rode down the Strip in a vintage convertible in a parade, was given the key to the Strip, and Park Avenue, the road outside his long time home at Park MGM, was renamed Bruno Mars Drive. He is only the second performer, after Elvis Presley, to have a street connected to the Strip named after him, a neat full circle for the boy once billed as Little Elvis. He pledged a million dollars to a new children's hospital, then opened The Romantic Tour that night at Allegiant Stadium in front of more than sixty thousand people.[1] [2] [3]

The Romantic Tour is his first all stadium tour of North America and Europe, and demand was so strong that dozens of extra dates were added. Anderson .Paak joins the bill under the name DJ Pee .Wee and has stepped out for Silk Sonic songs. As of 2026, the tour is set to continue into 2027 with legs in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, including a record run of stadium shows in Japan. From a five year old singing at a football game in Honolulu to a street named after him in Las Vegas, Bruno Mars has spent more than thirty five years proving that old fashioned showmanship still works.[1] [2] [3]

The people around Bruno Mars

Bruno Mars and Philip Lawrence. They met in 2006 at a session Lawrence could barely afford to reach, and it was the first time either had written and recorded a whole song. Together they sold songs, formed the Smeezingtons and then Shampoo Press and Curl, and co-wrote hits from Nothin' on You to Uptown Funk. Lawrence also sang backing vocals and traded moves with Mars on stage in the Hooligans for years.[1] [2] [3]

Bruno Mars and Ari Levine. Levine was the producer and engineer who turned the Smeezingtons into a trio, bringing his Levcon studio, drum programming and electronic sounds. He recorded and engineered Mars's early EP and his first two albums. The team's last production together was Adele's All I Ask, which earned them a share of the Album of the Year Grammy for 25 in 2017.[1]

Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson. Ronson produced songs for Unorthodox Jukebox, including Locked Out of Heaven, then spent seven exhausting months finishing Uptown Funk with Mars and Jeff Bhasker. The pressure was so intense Ronson fainted in one session. The song won them Record of the Year, and Ronson has said he feels it belongs more to Mars than to him.[1] [2]

Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak. They met on the European leg of Mars's 24K Magic tour in 2017, and their backstage jokes turned into Silk Sonic. Their friendly rivalry in the studio produced Leave the Door Open and four Grammys. .Paak has insisted the duo is not over, and in 2026 he joined The Romantic Tour as an opening DJ and a guest for Silk Sonic songs.[1] [2] [3]

Bruno Mars and Bernadette Hernandez. His mother was a Filipino born hula dancer and singer whose charm on stage, he said, was where he got his own. He recorded a song for her at the age of four, which she played for years. Her sudden death from a brain aneurysm in June 2013, at fifty five, devastated him, and he honored her with a drum kit at the Super Bowl.[1] [2] [3]

Bruno Mars and Peter Hernandez. His father, a Brooklyn percussionist, led the family show band, taught his son doo-wop and Little Richard, and gave him the nickname Bruno. After the divorce, father and sons fell into poverty and lived in a car and an abandoned bird zoo. Mars says his dad kept trying to sell shows to hotels, and credits that time with teaching him patience.[1] [2] [3]

Bruno Mars and Eric Hernandez. His older brother shared the hard years in Paradise Park and played in the Los Angeles cover band Sex Panther with him. Since 2010 Eric has been the drummer of the Hooligans, playing on records like That's What I Like. Mars joked that their late mother still nags him from above to tell his brother to shave his mustache.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Bruno Mars and Brandon Creed. Creed bought the song Lost for a reunited Menudo for twenty thousand dollars in 2008, a payment that kept Mars and Lawrence in Los Angeles. He then managed Mars for nine years, through four Grammys, six Hot 100 number ones and two Super Bowls, before they parted ways in 2016, with Mars reportedly bringing management in house.[1] [2] [3]

Bruno Mars and Jessica Caban. Mars and the model Jessica Caban became a couple in the early 2010s, around the time of his first album. They lived in the Hollywood Hills with a Rottweiler named Geronimo. In 2016 he called her his best friend and his rock, and laughed off questions about marriage. He has kept his private life very private.[1] [2] [3]

Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga. Mars played Gaga an unfinished song about the end of the world in 2024, and they completed Die with a Smile together in a single late night session, with Mars producing her vocals. She joined him on stage at his Inglewood shows as the song came out. It won them the 2025 Grammy for Best Pop Duo or Group Performance.[1] [2] [3]

Bruno Mars and Rosé. They met at his studio in the summer of 2024, when the Blackpink singer was planning her solo debut and pumped him for advice, thinking it would be their only meeting. APT. followed, and Mars also co-wrote her album opener. Rosé describes him as a mentor and big brother figure.[1] [2]

Bruno Mars and Kanye West. After Mars won at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West complained at a concert that Mars had won all the awards and was being promoted as the prettiest star around. Mars laughed it off, agreed about the pretty part, and said West later phoned to apologize. West's representative did not comment.[1]

Rare facts about Bruno Mars

• His father nicknamed him Bruno at the age of two, after the professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino. Peter Hernandez senior thought his chubby toddler looked like the wrestling star Bruno Sammartino. The nickname stuck, and years later Bruno added Mars, joking that girls told him he was out of this world.[1] [2]
• His first halftime show was not the Super Bowl but the 1990 Aloha Bowl, when he was five. On Christmas Day 1990 the five year old sang a Christmas song during the halftime show of the Aloha Bowl college football game in Hawaii. Twenty three years later he headlined the Super Bowl halftime show.[1] [2]
• As a child he had a cameo in the 1992 Nicolas Cage comedy Honeymoon in Vegas. Billed locally as Little Elvis, the young Mars appeared briefly in the film, which is full of Elvis impersonators, including a skydiving troupe of them. He also appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show at around six.[1] [2] [3]
• After his parents split, he lived for about two years in a one room shack in an abandoned bird zoo. His father had worked at Paradise Park, a bird zoo in Honolulu. When it closed, he and his two sons stayed in a one room building on the grounds. In 2016 Mars took a 60 Minutes crew back to the overgrown ruins.[1] [2]
• In high school he earned seventy five dollars a show impersonating Michael Jackson. While at President Theodore Roosevelt High School in Honolulu, Mars was a known local entertainer, doing a Michael Jackson act for seventy five dollars a performance and opening for a large magic show.[1]
• His first job in Los Angeles was as a DJ, even though he did not know how to DJ. Short of money after moving from Hawaii, he told someone he could DJ because they offered seventy five dollars cash. He could not, and he lost the job quickly.[1]
• Philip Lawrence came to their first session only after being promised five dollars for the bus. Lawrence was broke and carless in 2006 when he was told to meet a talented kid from Hawaii. The producer promised to reimburse him, and all Lawrence asked for was five dollars bus fare.[1] [2]
• A song written for Bruno himself was sold to a reunited Menudo for twenty thousand dollars. Brandon Creed wanted a track called Lost for the revived boy band. The payment arrived just as Mars and Lawrence were ready to quit Los Angeles, and it kept them going.[1] [2]
• Billionaire was dreamed up in London, where Mars and Ari Levine had about two hundred and forty pounds each for eleven days. Their label sent them to London to work on a record, with very little money to live on. Walking around broke, Mars came up with the hook about wanting to be rich.[1]
• The demo of Billionaire originally mentioned Diddy, and Travie McCoy asked for Oprah instead. McCoy said in 2025 that the Smeezingtons' demo named Diddy alongside the Queen, but he did not want to sing Diddy's name every night. Mars agreed to swap in Oprah. McCoy also said he had to push to keep Mars's vocal on the song.[1]
• Mars said the hook of Nothin' on You was inspired by Prince's The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. He revealed the inspiration to Rolling Stone in 2013. The song grew from a melody he and Lawrence hummed, over a drum beat Ari Levine programmed in an old school hip-hop style.[1]
• Just the Way You Are became the highest certified single in the history of the RIAA. His debut solo single has been certified twenty one times platinum in the United States. It was also the best selling download in the world in 2011, with over twelve million sold.[1]
• The Lazy Song video cost a couple of thousand dollars and was shot in one take, using the tenth attempt. Unhappy with the label's video, Mars asked to make his own. He bought chimpanzee masks, hired the dance crew Poreotics, and co-directed it with Cameron Duddy over two days, filming twelve takes.[1]
• Talking to the Moon was released as a single only in Brazil, after a soap opera used it. The song featured on the soundtrack of the Brazilian telenovela Insensato Coração in 2011 and spent weeks at number one on Brazilian airplay charts, the start of his huge following there.[1]
• Locked Out of Heaven started life as a cha-cha duet that sounded like Santana's Smooth. Mars keeps that early version on his laptop as a reminder that great songs take a long process. A jam session in New York with Jeff Bhasker and Mark Ronson gave it the Police style groove.[1] [2]
• The label wanted to call Uptown Funk by a different title, Just Watch. Record company executives hesitated over the title Uptown Funk. The song kept its name and went on to spend fourteen weeks at number one in America.[1]
• The famous vocal bass line in Uptown Funk was sung by Philip Lawrence because he could not play bass. Lawrence suggested an opening bass line after a tour show. Since he did not play bass, engineer Charles Moniz told him to sing it, and his voice made the final record.[1]
• Mars was not paid for headlining the 2014 Super Bowl halftime show. The NFL does not pay halftime performers a fee, treating the slot as priceless exposure. For Mars, the payoff came in soaring ticket demand for his tour.[1]
• Hawaii lawmakers proposed an anti scalping measure nicknamed the Bruno Mars Act. After tickets for his Hawaii concerts were resold at inflated prices in the week after the Super Bowl, a state senator proposed limiting early ticket sales to box offices. It passed the Senate but died in committee.[1]
• At four, he recorded a song for his mother, written with his father, and gave it to her on cassette. Mars told Rolling Stone he gave it to her for her birthday or Mother's Day. He did not remember her reaction, but said she played it forever.[1]
• Mars imposed a dress code while recording 24K Magic, with no sweatpants allowed. He wanted fine clothes and jewelry in the studio, believing that dressing smooth would help create smooth, soulful songs. The album took about twenty two months to make.[1] [2]
• Cardi B's verse on the Finesse remix was recorded backstage at three in the morning after his Los Angeles show. Mars wrote that she walked in and was everything he had hoped. The video paid homage to the sketch show In Living Color, with the blessing of its creator Keenen Ivory Wayans.[1]
• Adele insisted on keeping the word lovers in All I Ask, despite Mars's doubts. Mars thought nobody really says lovers. Adele refused to change it, and he later admitted she was right. The song earned the Smeezingtons a share of the Album of the Year Grammy.[1] [2]
• The day before the 2016 Super Bowl, Beyoncé calmly ate a bag of Cheetos while Mars stressed about his diet. Both singers had been dieting for the show. Beyoncé told Mars there was nothing more they could do, so she was going to enjoy her snack.[1]
• In 2016 Mars played the private wedding of Spotify founder Daniel Ek at Lake Como. He was not supposed to talk about it, but a guest posted it online. He said he had been playing weddings since he was eight and found it a healthy return to basics.[1]
• Mars discovered the producer D'Mile on Instagram. He heard D'Mile's work on Lucky Daye's album Painted and asked the songwriter James Fauntleroy to put them in touch. D'Mile went on to co-produce Silk Sonic and all of The Romantic.[1] [2]
• The name Silk Sonic was chosen by Bootsy Collins after he heard the album. The funk bassist, a hero to both men, served as the album's guest host and narrator, and came up with the name for the duo.[1] [2]
• At his Las Vegas residency, fans had to lock their phones away in pouches before entering. The Park MGM shows used a no phone policy, sealing devices in Yondr pouches, so the audience watched the show rather than filming it.[1]
• Die with a Smile was first considered for Lady Gaga's Joker sequel before becoming a standalone duet. The songwriter James Fauntleroy said Mars thought about pitching an early version for Joker: Folie à Deux or its companion album. Instead, Gaga finished it with him as a duet.[1]
• Rosé went into her first meeting with Mars assuming it would be their only one. She treated the 2024 meeting as a one off chance to collect tips. Instead it led to APT., the best selling global single of 2025, and a close friendship.[1] [2]
• Mars is only the second performer after Elvis Presley with a street connected to the Las Vegas Strip named for him. In April 2026 Park Avenue outside Park MGM became Bruno Mars Drive. Elvis Presley Boulevard had been the only other such honor for a performer.[1] [2]
• I Just Might was the first Hot 100 number one with the word might in its title. Billboard noted the previous highest charting song with might in its title was The Cars' You Might Think, which peaked at number seven in 1984.[1]
• He waited nearly thirteen years between number one albums in America. Unorthodox Jukebox reached number one in 2013, and The Romantic debuted there in March 2026. Billboard said that was the longest gap for a living solo male since Paul McCartney.[1]
• In Tel Aviv, he was booked to be only the third American artist to play two sold out shows at Hayarkon Park. Only Madonna and Michael Jackson had done it before. The second show, set for the seventh of October 2023, was cancelled after the Hamas attack.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.