Bruno Mars Announces Return With New Music After a Nearly 2-Year Hiatus

Bruno Mars has been fairly quiet for the past two years, but he has now announced his triumphant return and revealed that he has some new music on the way. On Thursday, the singer took to Instagram to reveal that he teamed up with rapper Anderson Paak to create a new musical duo. “We locked in and made an album. The band’s called Silk Sonic. First song drops next Friday 3/5,” Mars wrote in the post, which also featured a poster of the two that adds, “With special guest Host Bootsy Collins.”

It’s been some time since Bars dropped his own music. The singer has three full-length studio albums to his name so far: Doo-Wops & Hooligans (2010), Unorthodox Jukebox (2012), and 24K Magic (2016). His last official single was the 2018 song “Finesse,” which featured Cardi B. Mars’ last musical appearance was in 2019, when he joined country singer Chris Stapleton on the Ed Sheeran single “Blow.” Fans have been desperate for some new music from Mars, and now we know that it won’t be much longer before that hope becomes a reality.

Mars does not often speak to the press, and hasn’t for some time at this point, but back in 2017 he sat down with Complex and opened up about his very first Tv special, 24K Magic Live at the Apollo. The special was filmed at the iconic Harlem venue and featured Mars and his band dishing out hit after hit from their catalog of pure Grade A hits. “I have always wanted to play at the Apollo and I said before that I wanted this album to be a movie,” Mars said ahead of the special’s debut.

“I kept thinking in my head that I wanted to create some kind of dialogue with this album and then I got approached to do a special and thought maybe I can’t do a movie with it, but maybe this is what I’m supposed to do,” he continued. “So I’ll go ahead and finish the year off and maybe I can show my vision on the TV special.” After being asked if there were any specific Apollo acts that he intended to imitate, Mars explained that he planned to draw influence from all of them.

“Everybody who performed at the Apollo I’ve been watching. Before American Idol and X-Factor and all these shows and singing competitions I remember growing up watching the Apollo, it’s pretty cutthroat,” he said. “It’s either you got it and they will cheer you on or you will blow it and they gon’ boo you off the stage. So I always live by that motto; make sure you got it.”