Do we like Bruno Mars?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up and there's real giving on record, but he keeps his politics to himself, so the evidence of active support is thin.
Peter Gene Hernandez was born in Honolulu in 1985 into a family act that ran a Las Vegas-style revue in Waikiki. By four he was working as an Elvis impersonator, and he later added Michael Jackson. That's the root of the showman you see now.
The road wasn't smooth. Motown signed him in 2004 and dropped him a year later, so he went to Los Angeles and wrote hits for other people, including Flo Rida's Right Round. Then B.o.B.'s Nothin' on You made him a name, and he's since racked up 15 Grammys, two Super Bowl halftime shows, a Vegas residency, Silk Sonic with Anderson .Paak and a Lady Gaga duet.
The messy bit: in March 2024 NewsNation reported, citing an unnamed insider, that he owed MGM about $50 million from gambling. MGM called that speculation “completely false” and said he “has no debt with MGM”. It rests on anonymous sourcing and nobody has produced proof, so it's rumour territory, not a finding.
The other long-running stoush is the accusation, since 2018, that he borrows from Black music without enough credit. On The Breakfast Club in 2021 he named James Brown, Prince and Michael Jackson as the reason he's here, and said his music comes from love. Where you land depends on whether you hear humility in that or a brush-off, since he also waved the critics away as just Twitter.
Now the harm check, and it's a clean one. We found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ or trans people, no conspiracy theories, no anti-vax or election claims and no culture-war grievance. His recent tour openers include Victoria Monét, RAYE, Leon Thomas and Anderson .Paak, and the Inquirer called the crowd the most diverse its critic had seen this year. The catch is that he barely does politics, so we can't point to him speaking up for anyone, only to the absence of anything nasty.
The latest wobble was in March, when users spotted him liking a post calling Taylor Swift “talentless”. Reports said the like was removed and may have been an accidental tap, and Mars said through Pop Flop: “Taylor has always been supportive and kind to me.” Small beer, but a good reminder to check a screenshot before starting a feud.