Most simians learn by copying, and humans are no exception. You could make an anthropological case arguing that singers are the foremost perpetuators of monkey hear, monkey do. We all know that Stars in Their Eyes never really left British TV screens, it just came back as The X Factor, an orthodox jukebox of moves to cop.
Bruno Mars, author of 2010's hugely successful Doo-Wops & Hooligans, has often been criticised for aping his heroes. His penchant for jumping genres has been ascribed to a Hawaiian childhood spent impersonating Elvis, his fondness for the "wrong" kind of old music – doo-wop – evidence of a damning lack of edge.
Of course the impersonation Mars cleaves to the closest is Michael Jackson, aided by that studied trilby, a crushed croon and lithe performer's physique. If you tell a lie enough times, it starts ringing true, and something has clearly rubbed off on Mars. No one is saying that the man born Peter Hernández is in the same league as MJ, but Billboard magazine went so far recently as to identify his potent "quadruple threat" as a singer-songwriter-producer-performer who is rather handy at this whole tune-mongering caper. Mars writes for himself and others (Cee Lo Green's Forget You was one of his); he produces, as one of the Smeezingtons (Sugababes, Flo Rida); he lit up the Grammys this year with the exhortation: "Get off your rich asses and let's have some fun!"
Listening to his second album, you can easily see why this capable, versatile man is so successful; the most famous thing out of Hawaii since Barack Obama. In the fraught, loud, ADD world of pop production, Mars's songs value narrative arc and internal logic; his soundscapes have three dimensions. Every element isn't just yelling at you from the front.
But it's harder to see why anyone is a fan of his in particular, because Mars remains a cipher. This second charabanc jumps around just as much as his first, taking in reggae, a piano ballad, soft rock and vocoder funk. Given the Jimmy Savile scandal, a song extolling the virtues of "young wild girls" sounds a little off-key to British ears in 2012, but you can't fault the tunefulness at work.
Reggae is big in Hawaii; Mars's syrupy vocal works well on the persuasive lover's dub Show Me, the work of Jamaican producer Supa Dups. The single, Locked Out of Heaven, by contrast, channels the Police. But its 21st-century builds owe as much to rave-pop as they do to producer Mark Ronson. It's an ill-omened meeting that somehow gels.
Overall, there is rather less doo-wopping on Unorthodox Jukebox, an album that, despite its title, deserves your grudging respect, and a little more hooliganism. Mars the loverman made his name singing heartfelt pap whose old-time vibe found favour with pre-teens and maiden aunts. Now, on the soft rock of Gorilla, he's riffing on a coitus so animalistic, the lucky lady is pounding on his chest.
The story goes that Mars heard one his sloochiest hits, Just the Way You Are, in a Paris strip club. It sounded all wrong. The incident could have put a nice guy like him off strip clubs. But Mars resolved to write a more apposite song. The result is Money Make Her Smile, a seductive collaboration with world-beat bad boy Diplo, and not half as Neanderthal as it could be.
