Bruno Mars - Just the Way You Are

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

How they managed to cram five writers into the credits is anyone's guess
(but I'll bet they went through a lot of Crayons)

Bruno Mars
Just the Way You Are
Ass Kissing
#33 (HiMid)
Peter Hernandez
Philip Lawrence
Ari Levine
Khalil Walton
Khari Cain
The Smeezingtons
Needlz

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This whole project was conceived because I was going to rectify my ignorance of popular music, not for me to be a hateful dick, but the last song to cross my desk that wasn't a shriekingly awful piece of cynical fluff was Ke$ha. In February. And that was cynical commercial fluff, too; it just wasn't awful.

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for Ke$ha.

Bruno Mars still kind of bugs me, and this song is still a Run!, but it has three things going for it: it's not as bad as “Marry You (Just Say YeahYeah Yeah Yeah Yeah),” it doesn't feature Chris Brown, and it's not a cover of a Billy Joel song.

I can't even begin to communicate how glad I am that this isn't Bruno Mars covering a Billy Joel's 80s hit “Just the Way You Are.” He looks the type, archly glancing from behind his piano with his little hat... I'm sure he's played "Only the Good Die Young" at a piano bar at least once. But this is not that. It's only a small reprieve, though, as this is the next in the seemingly unbreakable string of Run!s that are dominating this blog.

Oh her eyes, her eyes
Make the stars look
like they're not shining
Her hair, her hair
Falls perfectly
without her trying
She's so beautiful
and I tell her every day

The problem I have with Mars is most likely what makes him popular in the first place: mawkishly sap in the lyrics over simple pop chords. “Just the Way You Are” has the kind of childish lack of romance that could have been recorded by New Kids on the Block. This is what a little kid thinks of love when their first kiss is still years away. It's the kind of thing that should be sequestered on the Disney Channel until it reaches the legal drinking age, but High School Musical broke the gates open and these songs are allowed to wander around unchaperoned.

I'm willing to bet the only reason this song doesn't have the same fan base as The Ready Set is the picture on the poster. I wonder if that hampers its sales. “Bruno! Great song! Um, Bob from marketing here-- can we make you look like a fourteen year old boy with a girl's haircut? We could really sell this to the tweens.”

Since this is Bruno's second appearance here, I've got a limited set of songs to draw from... but since I'd heard the previous song, I somehow felt like I'd already heard this one: I heard that falsetto coming at 2:38 before he hit it. It's basically the same part as the “Just say I do” falsetto bridge in “Marry You.” I was never going to call Bruno Mars original, but it seems like he's written one song, has a producer modify it slightly, and is releasing it as a handful of singles.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Bruno Mars - Marry You

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

I'm saying "No no no no no"

Bruno Mars
Marry You
Marriage Porn
#98 (Low)
Dec 16, 2010
Bruno Mars
Plilip Lawrence
Ari Levine
The Smeezingtons

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It just gets worse and worse! If this song had balls, it would be receiving quick, repeated kicks until it crawled, whimpering, back into whatever kind of hole spews this annoying junk forth. I know I usually wait until discussing the song a little bit before digging into lyrics, but when the refrain is “Don't say no no no no no, just say yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, and we'll go go go go go, if you're ready,” you don't want to bury the lead: that's precisely how stupid this song is.

I'm sure proposals scored by this thing are conducted by people who would look down their nose at Rascal Flats, but “Marry You” is even more frustrating because it's so smug and cutesy. It's no less Marriage Porn for it, either, complete with churchbells (which I think are playing the bell melody from They Might Be Giants' “The Bells Are Ringing” in the chorus, and “I Melt with You” in the intro) in the arrangement.

It's a beautiful night
We're looking for something dumb to do
Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you
Is it the look in your eyes
or is it this dancing juice?
Who cares, baby
I think I wanna marry you

Since it contains the title, I'm going to assume the “Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you” part is the chorus, though the “just say yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah” stuff is repeated about as often (and was probably the hook that sold the single). Regardless, it sounds awfully condescending-- getting married is his idea of something dumb to do, just to pass the time, and he's not even certain if this whim is inspired by the girl or the drink.

Quick answer: if you're not sure if it's the booze or not, you're too drunk to be making a decision like this. Do us all a favor and sleep on it.

Also, for a song called “Marry You,” I don't think there's a single mention of love.  It is vocally in support of letting the choir bells sing "like ooooh," (which, by the way, is not the sound bells make), but it doesn't have anything to say about love.

The repetition of the two parts I've already quoted make up most of the running time of the song, but one of the few other lines is “Who cares if we're trash, got a pocket full of cash we can blow.” I'm sure it's meant to be quirky, but it's probably also an honest reflection of what the writers think of their audience.

I haven't mentioned it in a while because I don't want to repeat myself by continually harping on Autotune, but this is an example of the other way it can be misapplied... like Billy Joel singing the national anthem (okay, maybe it's not that bad), no one's trying for a stylish effect here; the voice is just being jerked into key every time he drifts a bit. He's probably not a bad singer, but forcing this vocal part into computer perfection sounds painfully imperfect.

On the other hand, we should be thankful when we hear the autotune engage on that howling, hound dog summoning “Just say 'I dooooooooooo.'” I'm betting autotune is the lesser of two evils in that case.

 

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell: