In The Quantity Ones, I’m reviewing each single #1 single within the historical past of the Billboard Scorching 100, beginning with the chart’s starting, in 1958, and dealing my manner up into the current. Ebook Bonus Beat: The Quantity Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the Historical past of Pop Music.
The primary season of the hypnotically silly MTV actuality present Jersey Shore launched a number of new phrases to the American vernacular: “fitness center, tan, & laundry,” “gorilla juicehead,” “grenade.” The blokes on Jersey Shore defined {that a} “grenade” was the least engaging girl in a gaggle of pals. If your folks had been hooking up with this woman’s pals, then somebody must throw himself on the grenade. In a short time, “grenade” simply turned a generically dickish manner for these guys to speak about girls. Like every little thing else about Jersey Shore, the time period “grenade” wasn’t precisely a optimistic affect on tradition at massive. However that time period did give some humorous resonance to “Grenade,” the Bruno Mars single that topped the Billboard Scorching 100 simply as Jersey Shore was changing into a shock hit.
On “Grenade,” Bruno Mars howls about all of the self-destructive issues that he would do on your love. He’d catch a grenade for you! Throw his hand on a blade for you! Leap in entrance of a practice for you! You realize he’d do something for you! When Bruno sang about catching a grenade for you, he didn’t have the Jersey Shore definition of the time period in thoughts. On the time, Bruno instructed Rolling Stone, “We wrote that tune earlier than Jersey Shore began. I keep in mind telling folks on the label about ‘Grenade’ and so they began laughing, like, ‘Oh, that’s going to be actually humorous.’ However it’s not a joke tune.” Humorous factor, although: “Grenade” actually is a joke tune — or, at the least, it began off that manner.
Bruno Mars co-wrote “Grenade” with Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine, the 2 different members of his manufacturing workforce the Smeezingtons, and with fellow pop-music professionals Brody Brown, Andrew Wyatt, and Claude Kelly. In 2018, Kelly, who’s already been on this column for co-writing Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck With out You,” instructed The Tennesseean about how “Grenade” got here to be. On the time, Bruno’s common songwriting companion Philip Lawrence was going via a breakup, and Bruno was making enjoyable of him: “He was with this woman, and he would do every little thing for her, and she or he would do nothing in return, and now it’s a waste of time. We began throwing out actually excessive examples: ‘You soar out of a aircraft’ or ‘a shark would eat you,’ after which it turned humorous… And we began to comprehend this was truly sort of catchy. So we took somebody’s ache and become a fairly good file.”
It’s enjoyable to consider this honest wronged-lover heartbreak tune popping out of a sport of one-upped exaggeration within the studio, everybody busting on this one poor man as a result of he was too dedicated to his girlfriend. However it suits the Bruno Mars methodology. Bruno made his profession by synthesizing completely different pop-music idioms and by singing about relationships in probably the most sweeping, generic phrases. Once you hear Bruno Mars sing, you don’t essentially assume that’s he’s truly feeling the sentiments that he’s describing. However he’s good at play-acting regardless of the scenario warrants. Within the case of “Grenade,” he needed to make his over-the-top post-breakup ache sound real. He succeeded, and he turned it right into a file that may even be higher than fairly good.
Simply earlier than he launched his debut album Doo-Wops & Hooligans, Bruno Mars instructed Idolator a special story concerning the writing of “Grenade.” Bruno was pals with Benny Blanco, a songwriter and producer who’s already been on this column a bunch of occasions and who might be again a bunch extra occasions. Blanco was enjoying songs for Bruno, and certainly one of them had an analogous lyric: “He stated, this band isn’t signed, it is a CD that wasn’t launched. I stated to Benny, ‘I can relate to that a lot, I need to take that and make it my very own.’ He was in touch with the dude, and I began writing my model, principally.”
Bruno by no means recognized the unsigned band who impressed “Grenade.” That tune nearly actually didn’t come from any of Bruno’s credited “Grenade” co-writers. Andrew Wyatt, a type of co-writers, truly was in a band. So far as I do know, he nonetheless is. In 2009, the New York native Wyatt shaped the group Miike Snow with the Swedish pop producers Bloodshy & Avant. However Miike Snow had been signed; their self-titled debut got here out on Downtown Data in 2009. Bruno Mars is a canny music-business operator, so I’ve to imagine that he wouldn’t have talked about this unnamed, unsigned band in an interview except he got here to some sort of monetary settlement with them. However this was pre-coke-arrest Bruno, so who is aware of?
In any case, each of these tales may be true. Bruno Mars may’ve heard this band’s related tune and filed his intention away. Then he may’ve been making enjoyable of his pal within the studio, and he may’ve related the dots. (Claude Kelly says that Bruno was the one who got here up with the “I’d catch a grenade for ya” line.) Bruno Mars hits typically don’t arrive as lightning-bolt inspiration moments. He takes his time with them. In 2011, Bruno’s fellow Smeezington Ari Levine instructed Sound On Sound that “Grenade” took an particularly very long time to write down: “That was months of sitting within the studio and shedding sleep over how we had been going to make the tune work. We knew that we had one thing superior, however we weren’t all the time assured that it could work.”
At first, Levine says, “Grenade” was a quicker tune, with a complete lot extra guitar within the association. I can think about that fairly simply. With a number of gentle manufacturing tweaks, “Grenade” may simply be a power-pop banger, a Automobiles tune. A lot of Bruno Mars songs might be Automobiles songs. He might be Bruno Automobiles! But when Bruno had been to sing about catching a grenade for ya over revved-up new-wave guitars, the tune would sound like a joke — or, at greatest, like a type of Weezer tracks the place you possibly can’t fairly pinpoint the meant degree of irony.
Bruno carried out a slowed-down model of “Grenade” at a few showcases, and he discovered that this was what his A&Rs wished. Levine says, “Bruno performed the tune slower dwell, and the label was like, ‘Oh, that’s unimaginable.’ So we needed to reproduce it in the way in which you hear it now on the radio, two days earlier than the album was purported to be handed in. There was fairly a little bit of deadline stress concerned in that. We fully rearranged and re‑recorded the tune, together with the vocals.”
In its remaining model, “Grenade” is simply an early-’10s pop tune. You possibly can’t put any subgenre tag on the monitor; it’s simply pop. The tune’s instrumentation is sort of fully digital, however the tune itself may’ve come from nearly any pop decade. Bruno sings in a pained, pleading tone over artificial pianos and echoed-out drum machines and evocative digital whooshes. The entire thing sounds grand and dramatic, nearly as if Bruno is expertly portray by the grand-dramatic-pop-song numbers. However it’s robust to isolate anybody actual inspiration behind a tune like that. I’ve heard folks evaluate “Grenade” to Michael Jackson’s “Soiled Diana,” however I don’t hear a lot in frequent between these two songs. “Soiled Diana” is a genuinely fucked-up freakout. Bruno Mars by no means, ever sounds genuinely fucked up or freaked out. He solely ever appears like a gifted pop singer who’s gesturing in these instructions.
I’m positive that appears like faint reward, however I don’t intend it that manner. As with “Simply The Means You Are,” Bruno’s first solo chart-topper, “Grenade” is a type of songs that’s extra knowledgeable by emotional pop songs than by precise feelings. It’s not simple to take thorny, tough emotions and switch them into easy radio fare; that’s presumably why it took Bruno and his co-writers so lengthy to determine “Grenade” out. In its remaining kind, although, “Grenade” strikes like a high-efficiency engine. Bruno begs and pleads and howls, however he additionally hits all of his marks with mathematical precision.
On paper, “Grenade” nonetheless appears to be like like a joke tune. The lyrics are so exaggerated, so wildly aggrieved, that you would be able to’t actually take them significantly. Bruno would undergo all this ache! He’d take a bullet straight via his mind! He would die for you, child, and he’s crushed to comprehend that you just gained’t do the identical. However you shouldn’t do the identical! No one needs to be leaping in entrance of trains for relationship functions! It’s not wholesome! Bruno’s narrator merely doesn’t have practical expectations, and he solely turns into sympathetic as a result of he turns his dashed hopes into gourmand ear-candy.
At occasions, Bruno Mars’ “Grenade” accusations are full-on hysterical: “Mad girl! Unhealthy girl! That’s simply what you might be! Yeah, you’ll smile in my face however rip the brakes from my automobile!” There are emotional circumstances the place folks can flip different folks into pure abstractions. The opposite particular person in your life isn’t distant or egocentric; they’re the mustache-twirling villain who’s tying you to railroad tracks. Pop music was constructed on that sort of operatic simplicity, and if Bruno Mars understands anybody factor, it’s pop music.
The “Grenade” association, with its delicately shaded guitar tones and its sighing backup vocals, builds proper together with Bruno’s anguish, and it makes the refrain pop extra-hard. That refrain is the fireworks second, the second when you possibly can’t assist however get swept away within the tune’s drama. Bruno by no means fairly sounds plausible when he belts it out, however there’s sufficient grit and nuance in his supply that you would be able to get caught up in it anyway.
The video helped promote the tune, too. Bruno filmed the “Grenade” clip with Nabil Elderkin, the director liable for lots of that period’s most evocative music movies. Nabil had completed some Kanye West movies, however he wasn’t fairly a model title in 2011; that will come a yr later, when he did Bon Iver’s “Holocene” and Frank Ocean’s “Novacane.” Nabil discovered a easy, efficient, memorable technique to dramatize “Grenade.” The entire clip is simply Bruno Mars dragging a beat-up previous piano via Los Angeles. He’s all dressed up in his retro go well with, and he’s by some means all the time going uphill. He retains encountering obstacles — visitors, tunnels, loopy folks, implausibly indignant teams of gangbangers. Finally, he reaches a woman’s window — I assume he was going to play a tune for her — and he finds that she’s not alone. Bruno responds to this betrayal by dragging his piano onto some tracks and letting an oncoming practice flatten each himself and his piano. He actually does throw himself in entrance of a practice for her.
On the time, Bruno Mars instructed MTV that there have been no particular results concerned within the “Grenade” video. As a substitute, he bodily dragged a heavy piano all via Los Angeles: “Fortunately, I’ve been doing about, , 800 to 967 push-ups day by day, so it’s not an enormous deal, I can deal with it. Been workin’ on my bi’s, my tri’s, my clies and my thighs, that’s simply what it’s.” I recognize the unusual specificity of Bruno’s exercise regime. He saved making an attempt to try this 968th push-up, and his arms simply gave out on him. One other good Bruno line: “I shoulda been dragging a harmonica throughout city.”
Bruno Mars did every little thing in his energy to make it possible for “Grenade” related. He carried out the tune on Letterman, on Ellen, on the At present present, on the Soul Practice awards. On the 2011 Grammys, Bruno was up for seven awards, and “Grenade” was nominated for Document Of The Yr. The tune misplaced that award to Girl A’s nation ballad “Want You Now,” nevertheless it gained Finest Male Pop Vocal Efficiency. (“Want You Now” peaked at #2. It’s a 6.) On the Grammy telecast, Bruno sang a goofy retro-soul model of “Grenade” with affected black-and-white cinematography. Grammy voters love stuff like that, and so they have continued to heap trophies on Bruno ever since.
Per week after “Grenade” reached #1, Bruno Mars’ Doo-Wops & Hooligans album went gold. It’s now septuple platinum. Doo-Wops & Hooligans has principally by no means left the Billboard album charts. Proper now, as I write this, the album is sitting at #103 on the Billboard 200. It’s the album’s 637th week on the chart — fairly wonderful when you think about that the file solely had three huge singles. The “Grenade” single went diamond in 2020. A yr later, the tune’s video received its billionth YouTube view. The tune, it’s protected to say, has outlasted Jersey Shore. Bruno adopted “Simply The Means You Are” and “Grenade” with “The Lazy Tune,” a wretched Jason Mraz-ass novelty file that’s simply my least favourite of his hits. (“The Lazy Tune” peaked at #4. It’s a 2.)
Bruno Mars took a few years to launch one other album, however he was a chart mainstay even when he was in between album cycles. In 2011, Bruno dropped the ballad “It Will Rain” on the soundtrack of the Twilight film Breaking Daybreak Half 1. That’s a wonderfully forgettable monitor, and it doesn’t evoke any photos of lovelorn werewolves or vampires, nevertheless it nonetheless reached #3. (It’s a 6.)
For some time, Bruno Mars additionally maintained his profitable side-hustle as a producer and hook-singer on completely different pop-rap hits. In June 2011, Eminem, a man who’s been on this column a bunch of occasions, received again collectively along with his previous Detroit rap buddy Royce Da 5’9″ to launch an album below their group title Unhealthy Meets Evil. That file was a nakedly anti-commercial transfer, an excuse to spend an hour indulging in rap for rap’s sake. However the Smeezingtons co-produced the one “Lighters,” Bruno sang the hook, and the tune made it to #4. (It’s a 5.)
Later in 2011, Bruno Mars additionally sang the hook on former Quantity Ones artist Lil Wayne’s single “Mirror,” which peaked at #16, and sang one other hook for “Younger, Wild & Free,” the Smeezingtons-produced single that stoner-rap buddies Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa recorded for his or her straight-to-Redbox comedy Mac & Devin Go To Excessive Faculty. That tune made it to #7. (It’s a 6. Snoop Dogg has already been on this column a number of occasions, and Wiz will seem on this area quickly.)
Final month, I went to Seattle to interview Bay Space rap legend Too Quick whereas he was on Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa’s Excessive Faculty Reunion tour. (My Too Quick profile got here out within the New York Instances Journal a number of couple of in the past; I’m actually happy with it.) I used to be too busy doing interview stuff to see a lot of the Snoop and Wiz units, however the “Younger, Wild & Free” singalong was so loud that I may hear it backstage, with all of the audio system pointed away from me. I all the time considered “Younger, Wild & Free” as a forgettable tune, nevertheless it’s apparently nonetheless resonating. That has so much to do with Snoop and Wiz’s specific charisma, nevertheless it additionally owes an awesome deal to Bruno Mars’ sense of popcraft. The person is aware of what he’s doing. We’ll see a complete lot extra Bruno Mars on this column.
GRADE: 8/10
