It isn’t Liberace, but it’s catchy as hell. I have said that sentence about Bruno Mars’ songs since I was in the 10th grade, and this man is delivering to this day. Mars is soon about to come out with his latest album, Romance, which is releasing on February 27, and he has just released the first single, ‘I Just Might’. Okay — no matter how chipper a person you are, you can’t listen to disco songs all day, or even some days of the week. But just like ‘Hot Stuff’ grew on Matt Damon in the Ridley Scott movie The Martian, Mars (a lovely coincidence) keeps releasing disco hits which you can’t help but move your head to.
See, I like ‘serious music’ as much as the next guy, but sometimes you need a track that you can listen to without focusing on the lyrics, the time signature changes, and the fact that the singer was balancing herself on a tightrope while singing the G7 note, the highest note ever sung by your favourite Christmas singer. You need songs to lose your inhibitions to, to forget you’re in a room full of people (not recommended for all rooms), and Mars’ new song does just that.
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From the get-go, the lights, Bruno’s outfit, and the first quartet of notes tell you that this is a song to play at your 70s theme party. A catchy and funky bass line, accompanied by conga and drums, goes very well with the groovy Kool & the Gang-type guitar riff. Seeing the time he grew up in and his previous music, Bruno seems heavily inspired by Michael Jackson and Prince. He channels the latter for the music video, where different versions of himself are seen playing different instruments, which, just like Prince, Mars can do in real life as well.
The time signature isn’t hard to catch, and the song genuinely seems like something you can get and just move to. ‘It Just Might’ belongs to the same brand of songs as ‘Uptown Funk’, ’24k Magic’, or even ‘Finesse’, and it helps Bruno showcase all that he is really good at. Easy-to-remember lyrics are delivered with top-quality vocals, and the bridge, unlike almost every song these days, is very much present there, but I do wish it was longer than a couple of bars.
Yes, it is formulaic, and my hopes for the album are more than just 9 tracks sounding the same, because that really doesn’t work. But in isolation, the song is fun, easy to comprehend, and in the genre it exists in, it works. The song is great, but I hope the album is more.
