Sudden fame results in a change in tone for BRUNO MARS

January 2, 2013 at 12:00a.m.

By Mikael Wood

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES

When Bruno Mars made it big a couple of years ago with his debut, “Doo-Wops & Hooligans,” the impeccably attired singer did it with such conclusive style that you never really thought about the effort he put into his image.

In an era of amateur-driven “American”/ “Voice”/ “Factor” pop, here was a guy who seemed to have appeared fully formed one day: a pompadoured crooner in the tradition of Frankie Lymon, yet remade with modern trimmings that appealed to a crowd raised on X-rated hip-hop and post-everything boy bands.

His music felt just as precision-crafted: “Just the Way You Are” and “Grenade” propelled Mars to No. 1 on the singles chart, he sold 1.8 million albums and earned multiple nominations for Grammy Awards. It was a level of renown Mars had been aiming for since he moved to L.A. nearly a decade ago to pursue a solo career. Or at least that’s the way it seemed.

“Becoming famous was never what I wanted to do,” he insists. “There’s a lot of things that come with fame — it’s what people in the limelight have to do. I’m like, ‘Can’t I just write and sing?’”

On a recent visit to his Cape Cod-style home high in the Hollywood Hills, Mars, 27, looked dressed less for success than for hiding from it. Wearing rumpled jeans and an untucked T-shirt, his eyes shielded behind silver aviators, the usually dapper entertainer was due to fly to Sweden the next morning to promote his new sophomore disc. At the moment, though, he hardly seemed in the mood to talk himself up.

“If people are going to have an idea of me,” he said, “I’d just want them to think of a guy who goes in the studio, works hard and jams out.”

“Unorthodox Jukebox,” which came out Dec. 11, gives a different impression of the man behind the choreographed moves, presenting a dramatic vision of love under siege by fame (“Young Girls”), fortune (“Natalie”), and his own tomfoolery (“When I Was Your Man”).

Even relatively conflict-free tunes such as “Moonshine” and “Gorilla” — in which he invites a “dirty little lover” to bang on his chest like a great ape — exude a gritty desperation.

It’s an unexpected shift in tone from an artist known initially as pop’s go-to good guy, an old-fashioned romantic doling out positive affirmations not long after he’d first appeared with ingratiating guest spots on B.o.B.’s “Nothin’ on You” and Travie McCoy’s “Billionaire.”

“I think people will be surprised by it,” said Philip Lawrence, one of Mars’ partners in his L.A.-based production crew, the Smeezingtons. “But it’s not for shock value - it’s telling a story, digging deeper into the feeling of what it means to become a celebrity.”

Speaking in a relaxed manner opposite his frenzied stage presence, Mars described that experience as “being thrown to the wolves and having to deal with it” and said he wanted “Unorthodox Jukebox” to reflect where he is, not where he was.

“I love those (older) songs,” he said, sunning himself on a patio as one of his handlers arrived bearing cigarettes and coconut water. “I’ll stand by them and sing them till the day I die. But an artist has to stay excited to keep on doing it. And the way to stay excited is to keep pushing and to keep experimenting. I feel like I pushed on this record.”

So far he hasn’t seen any push back: the album entered Billboard’s album chart at No. 2, while “Locked Out of Heaven,” the disc’s lead single, just spent its second week atop the Hot 100. Reviews have been strong too, with high praise from Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone, the latter of which said the album “makes the competition sound sad and idea-starved by comparison.”