For the Love of God, Please No One Tell Bruno Mars About the Election

Photo: Courtesy of YouTube/Bruno Mars

On Thursday afternoon, Bruno Mars responded to some questions over Twitter.

Should everyone be given a day off to listen to the first album Mr. Mars has released in four years, 24K Magic?

“ABSOLUTELY!” he wrote of the album, out now. “It’s an international holiday in my mind!”

What should fans sip on while listening to the titular inescapable earworm “24K Magic” or slinky ballad “Versace on the Floor”?

“The most elegant Champagne with imported strawberries. Or some Sunny Delight. Whatever.”

One fan tweeted not a question but a statement, pulled from the album’s eponymous track: “Put yo pinky rings up to the moon!” Mr. Mars, ever the sport, responded to the non-question anyway. “Wasn’t a question but respect.” He signed this tweet with a sunglasses-face emoji, the emoji that best captures the pure essence of Bruno Mars: forever cool, never ruffled, and completely unaware of anything going on around him.

Bruno Mars has been living in a beautiful, impenetrable bubble for four years — and, for our benefit as well as his, we must ask him and his open-bloused Hooligans to stay there for as long as possible. The success of the world’s weddings and bar mitzvahs depends on it.

Today, 24K Magic is out: The world will finally hear a new Bruno Mars record. Unfortunately, we must do so in a world where only one week prior, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. In these trying times, Bruno Mars asks us to not be mad, to fix our face, to keep up. We should have believed him — we should have just watched. Previously, we didn’t believe him, and we didn’t just watch, and now look at the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Mr. Mars has never once implied any political allegiance, and god willing never will. A website called Hollowverse wrote of Bruno Mars’s politics, “The total lack of information regarding Bruno Mars’ religion and political beliefs is so staggering, that one speculates that Mars completely lacks depth and maybe even intelligence.” I would disagree. Bruno Mars is a man who simply came here to do what he came to do, and that is — historically — to have fun, look good, and be funky. And now more than ever, this is what he must do.

Recently there has been an expectation that America’s pop stars weigh in on politics: Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga all have. Over the next few years, people will turn imploringly to Bruno Mars for guidance and light in the darkness. It will not be because of his sudden transformation into an outspoken surrogate for the Democratic Party. It will be because of his lifelong commitment to the Party Party.

Watching the video for “24K Magic” as we enter the long haul of Trump’s America feels like if Molly Brown had decided to do a leisurely, rapturous waltz to strains of the Titanic string quartet as the ship sank. In the video, set in Vegas, neither Mars nor any member of his Hooligan crew gives any indication that America is about to succumb to chaos. At the climax, Mars jet-skis in the Bellagio fountain. He rides a mart cart stuffed with cash down the hallway of a hotel. He laughs in the face of god. This is a man who does not care about or fear a Trump presidency. This is a man who just wants to dance. Let him dance. And let his unabashed enthusiasm — even as we stare into the hellmouth — wash over you like a Xanax.

In a recent Rolling Stone cover story, Mars reported that he had been “living in this damn box for 18 months.”

Bruno, whatever you do: Stay right where you are and do not come out.

Please No One Tell Bruno Mars About the Election Results