Bruno Mars

"Uptown Funk" came out on the tenth of November 2014 with six names in the songwriting credits: Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars, Philip Lawrence, Jeff Bhasker, Nicholaus Williams and Devon Gallaspy. Today it has eleven. The other five were added on the twenty-eighth of April 2015, when the song had already spent fourteen consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and had been playing on every radio station in the world for months. No judge put them there, because there was no lawsuit.

What there was instead was a copyright claim filed in February 2015 by Minder Music, the British publisher of The Gap Band, in YouTube's content management system, alleging similarities to "Oops Up Side Your Head", from 1979. RCA accepted it and added the five writers of "Oops" —Charles "Charlie" Wilson, Robert Wilson, Ronnie Wilson, the keyboard player Rudolph Taylor and the producer Lonnie Simmons—, who ended up with seventeen per cent of the publishing, three point four per cent each, diluting the share of the six original signatories. The context explains the whole thing: weeks earlier, a Los Angeles jury had ruled against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke over "Blurred Lines", and a manager involved in the song said it without anaesthetic: everyone was being more cautious, nobody wanted to end up in litigation. Nine months later, "Uptown Funk" won Record of the Year with all eleven names already registered. The best-performing song of the twenty-tens according to Billboard itself is also a document about how the ownership of a melody works today.

A wrestler gave him the name

Peter Gene Hernandez was born in Honolulu and grew up in Waikīkī, one of six children. His father, Peter Hernandez, was a percussionist from Brooklyn, of Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish descent, with family roots in Hungary and Ukraine; he played Little Richard's repertoire. His mother, Bernadette San Pedro Bayot, a singer and hula dancer, had emigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii. They met performing in a show. The family band was called The Love Notes and he joined at the age of four, doing numbers by Frankie Lymon and Little Anthony. An uncle who was an Elvis impersonator had him singing Presley and Michael Jackson from the age of three. He performed five days a week, two shows a night, in places like the Sheraton Waikiki; the Hawaiian tabloid MidWeek presented him as "Little Elvis" in 1990, he had a cameo in Honeymoon in Vegas in 1992 and at six he appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show.

The stage name has two halves and he has an explanation for both. "Bruno" was given to him by his father when he was two, because he thought the chubby boy walked like a bulldog, just like the professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino. "Mars" came out of a studio joke: he was going around telling people he was not from this world. What he left behind was the surname, and he gave GQ the reason without dressing it up: with a Hernandez on the cover, the industry wanted to box him in as a Latin artist, to turn him into the next Enrique Iglesias. And the pretty story of the family of musicians stops exactly where it stops being pretty: the Love Notes ended with his parents' divorce, when he was twelve. His father's businesses collapsed and Mars, his brother and his father lived in a car, on rooftops and in a closed bird zoo, Paradise Park, where the father had worked. He changed schools and was bullied. In 2003, straight out of President Theodore Roosevelt High School, he moved to Los Angeles after his sister got a demo to industry contacts.

Twenty thousand dollars for one song

It took Atlantic three years to sign him: Aaron Bay-Schuck wanted him on the spot in 2006 and the label took the view that he still needed to mature. While he waited, Mars put together the songwriting and production team The Smeezingtons with Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine, between 2008 and 2009 in Los Angeles. The first sale was a call from Brandon Creed, who was looking for songs for a reunited Menudo: he bought "Lost", written for Mars, for twenty thousand dollars. That money was what convinced them to make a living writing for other people. Creed ended up being his manager for nine years.

What came next is signed on other people's records. "Right Round", by Flo Rida, released in February 2009, spent six weeks at number one on the Hot 100 and Mars is among its co-writers. "Nothin' on You" he wrote with Lawrence and Levine for Lupe Fiasco; Atlantic's president, Craig Kallman, was not happy with that version and passed it to B.o.B, who released it on the fifteenth of December 2009 and took it to number one in the United States and in the United Kingdom with Mars singing the chorus. Then came "Billionaire", by Travie McCoy, number four, and "Forget You", by CeeLo Green, number two. There is one case worth looking at closely: on "Wavin' Flag", the anthem of the 2010 World Cup, Mars co-produced K'naan's original but did not write on it; his name is on the "Coca-Cola Celebration Mix", which is a different recording.

His own career started with Doo-Wops & Hooligans, on the fourth of October 2010: number three on the Billboard 200 and number one in the United Kingdom. "Just the Way You Are" reached number one on the Hot 100 on the second of October 2010 and today holds twenty-one RIAA platinum certifications, one of the most certified singles in the label's history; "Grenade" reached the top on the eighth of January 2011. Neither of the two is a solo signature: the first he shares with Lawrence, Levine, Khalil Walton and Needlz, and the second with Lawrence, Levine, Brody Brown, Claude Kelly and Andrew Wyatt. Unorthodox Jukebox, from the seventh of December 2012, was his first number one on the Billboard 200, and out of it came "Treasure", which also changed credits after the fact: it was re-registered to include Thibaut Berland —Breakbot— and Christopher Khan over the similarity to "Baby I'm Yours". Between those albums his mother died, on the first of June 2013, at the age of fifty-five, from complications of a brain aneurysm; eight months later, Mars opened the Super Bowl XLVIII half-time show with a drum solo on a stage decorated in her honour, in front of more than one hundred and fifteen million viewers.

Las Vegas, September 2010

On Sunday the nineteenth of September 2010, at around ten to two in the morning, the police arrived at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas because a bathroom attendant had reported that Hernandez had been in a cubicle for too long. Security held him in a cell after he handed over two point six grams of a white powder that was identified as cocaine. He was charged with one felony count of possession of a controlled substance. According to the arrest report, he asked the officer whether he could speak to him honestly, admitted he had done something stupid and denied having used drugs before.

The deal became known on the twenty-eighth of January 2011 and the court accepted it on Friday the fourth of February: a suspension of judgment with two hundred hours of community service, two thousand dollars in fines, eight hours of counselling and twelve months of probation without incident. He complied, and in January 2012 the charge was dismissed. There was never a conviction. Of what he said on the cover of GQ in April 2013, the least comfortable part is the part that stays: that he was young and not thinking, that he had been handed a number one and there he was doing stupid things, and that when he told the police it was the first time he was so drunk he does not know where the lie came from. Fourteen years later another Las Vegas story turned up, and that one did not survive the first examination: in March 2024, a NewsNation report based on an anonymous source attributed to him a gambling debt of some fifty million dollars with MGM; MGM formally denied it on the eighteenth of March 2024, saying he has no debt with MGM, and there is not a single court filing to support any of it.

The 2018 accusation, the 2021 answer

On the ninth of March 2018, a clip of the writer and cultural critic Seren Sensei, taken from the YouTube series The Grapevine, went viral on Twitter: more than fifty thousand users tweeted about it. Sensei said that Mars is a cultural appropriator, that he is not black at all and that he plays on his racial ambiguity to move across genres; that he takes work that already exists and recreates it word for word without creating it or improving it. The underlying grievance was comparative: Mars had won Album of the Year six weeks earlier, on the twenty-eighth of January 2018, for 24K Magic, and Prince never won it. The fact the whole argument rests on is true: Mars has no known African ancestry. He had already addressed it in Latina in 2017, saying he had never claimed to have changed his surname to hide that he is Puerto Rican, and that for him black music is everything, because even salsa goes back to Africa.

The accusation was publicly rejected by black figures in music: Stevie Wonder, who called it stupidity; the producer 9th Wonder; the journalist Marjua Estevez; the critic Stereo Williams; and Charlie Wilson, who is one of the Wilsons of The Gap Band who had entered the credits of "Uptown Funk" three years earlier. Mars did not answer in 2018. He spoke three years later, on Friday the fifth of March 2021, on The Breakfast Club with Charlamagne tha God, the same day Silk Sonic were releasing "Leave the Door Open": he said you cannot find an interview of his in which he has not talked about the artists who came before, that the only reason he is there is James Brown, Prince and Michael, and that this music comes from love. And he conceded the part that matters: that there is real merit in what people say about black artists who do not get their recognition. In June 2025, with "Bonde do Brunão", the accusation came down on him again, this time from Brazil and over Brazilian funk.

February 2026, the tenth number one

Silk Sonic, the duo with Anderson .Paak announced on the twenty-sixth of February 2021, took four Grammys for "Leave the Door Open" at the ceremony of the third of April 2022: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song, all four categories it was nominated in. Then came two enormous duets: "Die with a Smile", with Lady Gaga, number one on the Hot 100 and eighteen weeks at the top of the Billboard Global 200, and "APT.", with Rosé, number three in the United States and nineteen weeks at the front of the Global excluding the United States, a record. He has sixteen Grammys from thirty-six nominations, and it is worth saying that one of the sixteen is not for work of his own: the Album of the Year of 2017 belongs to him for co-writing "All I Ask" by Adele. At the ceremony of the first of February 2026, "APT." arrived with three nominations —Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Pop Duo or Group— and won none of them.

And the profile would end badly if it stopped at Silk Sonic. On the ninth of January 2026 he released "I Just Might", which entered straight in at number one on the Hot 100 and is his tenth number one on that chart. On the twenty-seventh of February 2026 came The Romantic, his first solo album in ten years, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with one hundred and eighty-six thousand equivalent units and also at the top of the Billboard Global 200. On the eighteenth of April he released the compilation Collaborations as ambassador for Record Store Day, and in August "Still", with Karol G. In April 2026, MGM renamed the street between Park MGM and the T-Mobile Arena as Bruno Mars Drive.

What to remember

Bruno Mars has sold more than one hundred and fifty million records and holds the record for most weeks at the top of the Billboard Global 200, but his work is better understood by reading the small print. Two of the songs everyone attributes to him —"Uptown Funk" and "Treasure"— carry co-writers added after they had already been on the radio. The one that launched him was written for someone else. The World Cup anthem he co-produced is not exactly the recording he is credited on. And "Uptown Funk" is not even a single of his: it is Mark Ronson's, from the album Uptown Special, with him as co-writer, performer and co-producer. None of that takes anything away from what he did do: four Grammys in one night with Silk Sonic, a number one debut in January 2026 and an album at number one ten years after his previous solo record are not achieved with nostalgia. What changes is the idea of the single author, which was always a convenience of the story and never a fact of the register.

When "Uptown Funk" plays at a party, there are the eleven names: six who wrote it, five who arrived in 2015 with a claim on YouTube and without a trial in between, and seventeen per cent of the publishing that changed hands weeks after a Los Angeles jury decided that a resemblance has a price. And the record still contains a cell at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas in September 2010, with a charge that was dismissed in January 2012 because he met the conditions and that never became a conviction. If you or someone you know is facing problem drug or alcohol use, in Chile you can call SENDA's Fono Drogas y Alcohol free of charge and in confidence on 1412, twenty-four hours a day.

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Sources

Bruno Mars, stage name of Peter Gene Hernandez (Honolulu, Hawaii, 8 October 1985), American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer; living. Raised in Waikīkī, one of six children. Father: Peter Hernandez, a percussionist born in Brooklyn, of Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish descent, with roots in Hungary and Ukraine. Mother: Bernadette San Pedro Bayot, a singer and hula dancer who emigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii, died on 1 June 2013 at the age of 55 at the Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu from complications of a brain aneurysm. From the age of four he was part of the family band The Love Notes, which broke up with his parents' divorce when he was 12; his father went bankrupt and the family lived in a car, on rooftops and in the closed bird zoo Paradise Park. The tabloid "MidWeek" presented him as "Little Elvis" in 1990; a cameo in "Honeymoon in Vegas" (1992) and an appearance on "The Arsenio Hall Show". "Bruno" is a nickname his father gave him at the age of two after the wrestler Bruno Sammartino; "Mars" came out of a studio joke; he stopped using "Hernandez" to avoid being boxed in as a Latin artist, as he told "GQ". He moved to Los Angeles in 2003 after graduating from President Theodore Roosevelt High School. Aaron Bay-Schuck tried to sign him to Atlantic in 2006 and the label waited three years. With Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine he formed The Smeezingtons (Los Angeles, 2008-2009; dissolved around 2015-2016). First sale: "Lost", bought by Brandon Creed for a reunited Menudo for 20,000 dollars. Co-writes for others: "Right Round" (Flo Rida, 2009; no. 1 Hot 100, 6 weeks), "Nothin' on You" (B.o.B, 15 December 2009; no. 1 Hot 100 on the chart of 1 May 2010, 2 weeks; no. 1 UK on 29 May 2010; 6× platinum RIAA; originally written for Lupe Fiasco and reassigned by Atlantic's president, Craig Kallman), "Billionaire" (Travie McCoy, 9 March 2010; no. 4), "Fuck You"/"Forget You" (CeeLo Green, 19 August 2010; no. 2 Hot 100, no. 1 UK), "Get Sexy" (Sugababes, 2009; no. 2 UK), "Rocketeer" (Far East Movement, 2010), "Lighters" (Bad Meets Evil, 2011; no. 4), "Young, Wild & Free" (Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa, 2011; no. 7), "Mirror" (Lil Wayne, 2011; no. 16) and "All I Ask" (Adele, on "25", 2015). On "Wavin' Flag" (18 March 2009) he co-produced with Kerry Brothers Jr. and the only credited writer is K'naan; on the "Coca-Cola Celebration Mix" (30 April 2010) the writers are K'naan, Bruno Mars, Philip Lawrence and Jean Daval, with production by The Smeezingtons. His own discography: EP "It's Better If You Don't Understand" (11 May 2010, Elektra, no. 99), "Doo-Wops & Hooligans" (4 October 2010, Elektra/Atlantic; no. 3 Billboard 200, no. 1 UK, 9× platinum RIAA), "Unorthodox Jukebox" (7 December 2012, Atlantic; no. 1 Billboard 200 and UK, 6× platinum), "24K Magic" (18 November 2016, Atlantic; no. 2, 3× platinum), "An Evening with Silk Sonic" (12 November 2021, Aftermath/Atlantic; no. 2), "The Romantic" (27 February 2026, Atlantic; no. 1 Billboard 200 with 186,000 equivalent units and no. 1 Billboard Global 200) and the compilation "Collaborations" (18 April 2026, 11 tracks, Record Store Day). Singles: "Just the Way You Are" (no. 1 on 2 October 2010; 21× platinum RIAA according to the register of October 2025, one of the label's most certified; writers Mars, Lawrence, Levine, Khalil Walton and Needlz), "Grenade" (no. 1 on 8 January 2011; 16× platinum; writers Mars, Lawrence, Levine, Brody Brown, Claude Kelly and Andrew Wyatt), "The Lazy Song" (2011, no. 4, diamond), "Locked Out of Heaven" (1 October 2012, no. 1, diamond), "When I Was Your Man" (15 January 2013, no. 1, 11× platinum), "Treasure" (10 May 2013, no. 5; re-registered to add Thibaut Berland —Breakbot— and Christopher Khan over the similarity to "Baby I'm Yours"), "24K Magic" (2016, no. 4), "That's What I Like" (2017, no. 1, diamond), "Finesse" (remix with Cardi B, 2018, no. 3), "Leave the Door Open" (Silk Sonic, 5 March 2021, no. 1), "Die with a Smile" (with Lady Gaga, August 2024; no. 1 Hot 100, 18 weeks at no. 1 on the Global 200), "APT." (with Rosé, October 2024; no. 3 Hot 100, 19 weeks at no. 1 on the Global excluding the US, a record; International Song of the Year at the Brit Awards 2026), "I Just Might" (9 January 2026, Atlantic; writers Mars, D'Mile, Philip Lawrence and Brody Brown; no. 1 on entry and his tenth no. 1 on the Hot 100), "Risk It All" (27 February 2026, no. 4 on entry) and "Still" (with Karol G, 7 August 2026). More than 150 million records sold and the record for most weeks at the top of the Billboard Global 200. "Uptown Funk" is a single by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars, released on 10 November 2014 (Columbia/RCA) as the first preview of Ronson's album "Uptown Special": no. 1 on the Hot 100 for 14 consecutive weeks, from the chart of 10 January 2015 to that of 11 April 2015, when it was displaced by "See You Again"; no. 1 in the United Kingdom for 7 non-consecutive weeks; 11× platinum RIAA, 8× platinum BPI, diamond in Canada; best-performing song of the 2010s according to "Billboard". It came out credited to six writers: Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars, Philip Lawrence, Jeff Bhasker, Nicholaus Williams (Trinidad James) and Devon Gallaspy, the last two for material from "All Gold Everything" (2012). In February 2015, Minder Music, the British publisher of The Gap Band, filed a copyright claim in YouTube's content management system over similarities to "Oops Up Side Your Head" (1979); with no lawsuit involved, RCA added Charles "Charlie" Wilson, Robert Wilson, Ronnie Wilson, Rudolph Taylor and Lonnie Simmons on 28 April 2015, up to a total of eleven writers, with 17% of the publishing for The Gap Band, equivalent to 3.4% each. The change came weeks after the verdict against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke over "Blurred Lines". Other claims over the song: Viktorija (2015, did not sue), Collage (October 2016, over "Young Girls", 1983), Lastrada Entertainment (September 2017, over Zapp's "More Bounce to the Ounce", 1980) and The Sequence (December 2017, over "Funk You Up", 1979); all withdrawn or settled, with no ruling. On 13 January 2023, the heirs of Ronnie and Robert Wilson sued BMG Rights Management in a New York federal court over unpaid royalties on their 3.4% each; the suit was later withdrawn. Demetrius Proctor sued on 28 January 2014 claiming ownership of the copyright in "Billionaire" and the case was dismissed on 5 November 2020. Arrest: Sunday 19 September 2010, at around 1:50, at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, with 2.6 grams of cocaine; one felony count of possession of a controlled substance. Deal known on 28 January 2011 and accepted by the court on Friday 4 February 2011: suspension of judgment, 200 hours of community service, 2,000 dollars in fines, 8 hours of drug counselling and 12 months of probation. Once the conditions were met, the charge was dismissed in January 2012 (CBS News, 18 January; BBC, 19 January). There was no conviction. His own statements on the cover of "GQ" in April 2013 (interview by Chris Heath). Cultural appropriation: on 9 March 2018 a clip of Seren Sensei taken from the YouTube series "The Grapevine" went viral, with more than 50,000 users tweeting about it; the underlying grievance was that Mars had won Album of the Year on 28 January 2018 for "24K Magic" and Prince never won it. The accusation was publicly rejected by Stevie Wonder, Charlie Wilson, 9th Wonder, the journalist Marjua Estevez and the critic Stereo Williams. Mars answered on Friday 5 March 2021 on The Breakfast Club with Charlamagne tha God. In 2017 he had spoken about his ancestry in "Latina". In June 2025, Brazilian outlets reported accusations of appropriation of Brazilian funk over "Bonde do Brunão". Casino debt: a NewsNation report of 16 to 17 March 2024, based on an anonymous source, attributed to him some 50 million dollars of gambling debt with MGM; MGM Resorts formally denied it on 18 March 2024 through Jenn Michaels, senior vice-president of public relations, saying he has no debt with MGM, and there is no court or documentary record whatsoever. Super Bowl: headliner of the Super Bowl XLVIII half-time show on 2 February 2014 at MetLife Stadium, with Red Hot Chili Peppers as guests and 115.3 million viewers on Fox; guest at Super Bowl 50, on 7 February 2016 at Levi's Stadium, in Coldplay's show with Beyoncé. Grammys: 16 wins from 36 nominations as of 12 October 2026 — Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Just the Way You Are" (53rd ceremony, 13 February 2011); Best Pop Vocal Album for "Unorthodox Jukebox" (56th, 26 January 2014); Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo or Group Performance for "Uptown Funk" (58th, 15 February 2016); Album of the Year for Adele's "25" as co-writer of "All I Ask" (59th, 12 February 2017); six at the 60th ceremony (28 January 2018) for "24K Magic" and "That's What I Like"; four with Silk Sonic for "Leave the Door Open" at the 64th ceremony (3 April 2022, MGM Grand Garden Arena); and Best Pop Duo or Group Performance for "Die with a Smile" (67th, 2 February 2025). At the 68th ceremony, on 1 February 2026, "APT." had three nominations and won none. Other milestones: Bruno Mars at Park MGM residency since 2016; 24K Magic World Tour (2017-2018), more than 300 million dollars grossed; seven American Music Awards in 2017; An Evening with Silk Sonic at Park MGM residency since 25 February 2022; Silk Sonic's withdrawal from consideration for the 2023 Grammys on 14 October 2022; featured artist of "Fortnite Festival" in June 2025; key to the Las Vegas Strip and the renaming of Park Avenue as Bruno Mars Drive in April 2026; Record Store Day 2026 ambassador. Backing band: The Hooligans. Partner: the model Jessica Caban, since 2011. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Billboard, Time, BuzzFeed News, Forbes, Variety, CBS News, BBC, CNN, Newsweek, NME, Pitchfork, Music Business Worldwide, Metrópoles, Complex, GQ, Las Vegas Sun, TMZ, Grammy.com, the NFL, Wikipedia and other press coverage.