Doo-Wops & Hooligans


Doo-Wops & Hooligans is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Bruno Mars. It was released on October 4, 2010 by Atlantic and Elektra Records. After the release of the EP It's Better If You Don't Understand, Mars' writing and production team The Smeezingtons began working on the album with Needlz, Supa Dups and Jeff Bhasker as producers. Doo-Wops & Hooligans draws on a variety of influences. Lyrically, the album visualizes carefree optimism along with failed relationships, pain and loneliness. It was promoted primarily through the Doo-Wops & Hooligans Tour and a co-headline tour with Janelle Monáe, called Hooligans in Wondaland Tour, along with a number of television appearances. The album title was chosen to reflect simplicity and appeal to males and females.
On September 24, 2010, the album was made available before its official release. Nevertheless, it became a commercial success, topping the charts in Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 albums chart in the United States and was 2011's second-bestselling album in New Zealand, the third-bestselling record in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the fourth-bestselling album in Germany and Switzerland. The album has sold over 2.62 million copies in the United States as of 2017 and by 2012 had already sold six million copies worldwide.
The first two singles from Doo-Wops & Hooligans—"Just the Way You Are" and "Grenade"—were successful internationally, topping the charts in the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Subsequent singles "The Lazy Song" and "Marry You" were commercial successes as well, reaching the top 10 in over 10 countries; "The Lazy Song" topped the charts in the United Kingdom and Denmark. "Talking to the Moon" and "Count On Me" had a limited release, and "Liquor Store Blues" and "Somewhere in Brooklyn" were promotional singles.
The album received generally favorable reviews from music critics, who praised the album's similarity to the work of American artists Michael Jackson and Jason Mraz, although others felt that the album tried too hard to appeal to all groups. Doo-Wops & Hooligans received five nominations for the 54th Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album and Record of the Year and Song of the Year for the single "Grenade". The album was also nominated for Best Album/Pop Rock International at the 2012 Swiss Music Awards. In 2010, About.com's Bill Lamb and Rolling Stones Jody Rosen called Doo-Wops & Hooligans one of the year's best debut albums.

Background and development

After the release of the hit singles "Nothin' on You" and "Billionaire", The Smeezingtons were asked to begin working on Mars' debut album, having a six-month deadline. "The demand changed", leaving them with one month to finish the album. While establishing himself as a composer and artist, Mars worked with several artists and spent long periods of time in the recording studio "figuring out the production and the writing process"; he believed that "it was training for me to put out my own album."
Mars said about the album title, "I have records that women are going to relate to and men are going to relate to. So doo-wops are for the girls, and hooligans are for the guys." He elaborated in several interviews: "I grew up listening to my dad, who loved doo-wop music"; those sounds are "straight to the point" and simple; they rely on a "beautiful melody and voice", representing his romantic side. Due to his youth, he also liked to party. Mars said in an MTV News interview that he had completed his debut album. His debut EP, It's Better If You Don't Understand, released earlier in the year, provided "a little taste of what's in store".
In addition to writing the lyrics, the Smeezingtons produced the album with songwriters and other producers. Among them were Needlz and Khalil Walton, who helped compose "Just the Way You Are" by exchanging files. Mars said that the single took him months to create, even though he was only trying to tell a story and it was nothing "deep or poetic". "The Lazy Song", the fifth track, was inspired by a lack of ideas for songs and a disinclination to work. "Marry You", according to Lawrence, was drawn from a spontaneous marriage in Las Vegas. The bonus track, "Somewhere in Brooklyn", was inspired by Mars' father and New York. In the song, a female character is in Brooklyn and the singer is trying to find her.

Composition

Doo-Wops & Hooligans is primarily pop, reggae pop and R&B, although music critics also noted soul, reggae and rock influences. The album was compared to works by Michael Jackson and Jason Mraz. "Just the Way You Are", "Marry You" and "Runaway Baby" are uptempo songs; the former is an optimistic ballad, with yearning falsetto vocals influenced by U2. "Marry You" is a pop song about a spontaneous marriage idea, and "Runaway Baby" has a funky pop-rock and soul beat. "Marry You" is reminiscent of Coldplay, and "Runaway Baby" evokes Little Richard. "The Lazy Song", another uptempo song, is a reggae track described as an anthem "to sloth" and a "surf stoner's" borrowing from Sugar Ray. The second single, "Grenade", is a darker song with a masochistic message channeling Michael Jackson's "Dirty Diana", Kanye West's production and Shakira's style.
One of the album's promotional singles, "Liquor Store Blues", is a reggae track fusing Michael Jackson with Bedouin Soundclash; the single "Count On Me" is a friendship anthem which channels Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's "Over the Rainbow". The third track, "Our First Time", has been compared to the work of Boyz II Men, Al B. Sure!, D'Angelo and Sade. and is a reggae and R&B song. "Talking to the Moon" is a power ballad expressing the singer's pain and loneliness, primarily in the chorus. The last track, "The Other Side", features B.o.B and Cee-Lo Green. It has been called the album's highlight, with its most experimental and complex production. "Somewhere in Brooklyn", which was only released in Germany as a promotional single, was included as a bonus track on several Doo-Wops & Hooligans editions.

Singles

"Just the Way You Are" was released digitally as the album's lead single in various countries on July 20, 2010. The song was critically acclaimed, with reviewers praising its piano balladry and romantic lyrics. It topped the charts in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and reached the top ten in several other countries. "Just the Way You Are" received a Grammy Award in the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance category at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.
"Grenade", the album's second single, had been premiered as its second promotional single on September 28, 2010 before its stand-alone release in October 2010. It was also well received by critics, most of whom praised Mars' vocals. The single surpassed "Just the Way You Ares success, topping the charts in nearly every country where it was released. The song was Mars' third number-one on the Hot 100. In 2012, "Grenade" received three Grammy nominations at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.
"The Lazy Song", was issued as the album's third single on February 15, 2011. It received mixed reviews. Some critics though it had a laid-back groove; others called it "filler", with empty lyrics which were an embarrassment to the album. The song topped the charts in the United Kingdom and Denmark, reached the top five in the US, Austria, Canada and New Zealand. Its music video was a single, long shot of Mars playing with five monkeys. An alternate video features Leonard Nimoy on his lazy daily routine.
"Talking to the Moon" was released as a single only in Brazil after it appeared on the 2011 soundtrack of the Brazilian telenovela, Insensato Coração. The song topped the Billboard Brasil Hot Pop & Popular and the Brasil Hot 100 Airplay charts. It spent nine weeks at number one on the latter chart, and topped the former chart for 22 weeks. The song received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its slow pace and lyrics but criticized its overwhelming production.
"Marry You" was not released as a single in the United States, despite considerable airplay on mainstream and adult top-40 radio stations. However, it was first released in the United Kingdom on August 22, 2011 via digital download. The song was praised for its "instantly hummable melody and a sing-songy chorus", reminiscent of 1960s pop. It reached the top ten in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
"Count On Me" was announced as the sixth single, with a radio release date of November 7, 2011 in Australia. The song reached the top ten in Austria, Portugal and Spain, and the top twenty in Australia and New Zealand. It was praised for its arrangement and "uplifting" vibe, and compared with "Over The Rainbow" by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.

Release and promotion

The release of Doo-Wops & Hooligans was announced on August 25, 2010, with T-shirts, a screen-printed poster autographed and hand-numbered by Mars and photos of the singer included in the first 500 preorders. Its cover art was released five days later. The track listing, which included three of the four songs from Mars' EP, was announced by Atlantic Records on September 9. The album's standard edition was released in the US on October 4, 2010. A deluxe edition was also released, which included a remix of "Just the Way You Are" featuring Lupe Fiasco and "Somewhere in Brooklyn" and the music videos of "Just the Way You Are" and "The Other Side". Other versions were released, culminating in the Japanese Platinum Edition.
On September 21, 2010, "Liquor Store Blues" featuring Damian Marley was released worldwide. Three days later, the album was made available to listen before its official release on Myspace. "Grenade" was released as the second promotional single on September 28, 2010 via iTunes. The third promotional single, "Somewhere in Brooklyn", was released in Germany on January 4, 2011. "Runaway Baby" was performed at several shows, including The X Factor, the 54th Annual Grammy Awards and the Super Bowl XLVIII halftime show. The performances were praised by several critics, and the song charted in the US, New Zealand and the UK.
To promote the album, Mars gave several performances worldwide. The first, with his four-piece band, was at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City on August 25, 2010. In early October he performed "Just The Way You Are" and a medley of "Nothing On You" and "Grenade" for the first time on national television on Saturday Night Live, and received a positive critical reaction. This was followed by The Ellen DeGeneres Show, a Billboard Tastemakers video session and Mars' debut performance of "The Lazy Song" on Kidd Kraddick's radio show. Atlantic Records allowed the musical television series Glee to cover "Just the Way You Are" and "Marry You" in November 2010, and Mars sang "Grenade" on the Late Show with David Letterman that month. An acoustic version of "Just the Way You Are" was performed at the Grammy Nominations concert in December 2010 for the 53rd Grammy Awards.
Mars began the fall leg of Maroon 5's Hands All Over Tour, opening shows with OneRepublic, on October 6, 2010 in Santa Barbara, California. He then supported Travie McCoy on his European tour from mid-October to early November. The album was promoted by the Doo-Wops & Hooligans Tour, Mars' first headlining concert tour, which started on November 16 in San Francisco. Its second leg, from January to March 2011, consisted of concerts in Europe and was followed by dates in Asia and Oceania. Dates for the former tour in Europe, the Caribbean and South America were added. Mars concluded the tour on January 28, 2012 in Florianópolis, Brazil. In early 2011, a co-headline tour with Janelle Monáe, called Hooligans in Wondaland Tour, was announced. The concert tour was performed in North America in May and June 2011.

Critical reception

Doo-Wops & Hooligans was met with generally favorable reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, the album received an average score of 61, based on 13 reviews. Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave Doo-Wops & Hooligans 4.9 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.
Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly gave Doo-Wops & Hooligans a B+ grade. Greenblatt praised Mars' "instant-access melodies", "creamy" productions and "sly snatches of dance-floor swagger", but said that some of the album's musical styles did not suit the singer. Alex Young of Consequence of Sound called Doo-Wops & Hooligans "fulfilling very few holes", giving the album a B– grade but calling Mars' vocals "gold". The Daily Telegraph Tom Gockelen-Kozlowski wrote that the album had a "bundle of top-drawer melodies, making commercial success all but a certainty" and gave it four stars out of five. Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone called it "the year's finest debut" with "10 near-perfect" tracks, and gave the album three-and-a-half start out of five. According to Rosen, its songs "deliver pleasure without pretension". Rosen and The Boston Globes Ken Capobianco praised Mars' vocal performance and talent for composing melodies. Although Capobianco found the debut album "promising", he was disappointed by its lack of self-revelation. Sean Fennessey of The Washington Post called it "effortlessly tuneful" and a good start to a "durable career". The New York Times Jon Caramanica described Doo-Wops & Hooligans as a "fantastically polyglot record that shows him to be a careful study across a range of pop songcraft" and praised its range of influences.
In a mixed review, Tim Sendra of AllMusic praised most of the songs for their "laid-back groove" but found that the quality dropped when Mars "turns up the volume and boosts the tempo". Sendra gave the album three stars out of five, calling it "an uneven debut... doesn't tap into his potential as a writer or a producer". Scott Kara of The New Zealand Herald enjoyed the album's first two tracks, but wrote that the rest could have had more "potency" and rated Doo-Wops & Hooligans three out of five. Tony Clayton-Lea of The Irish Times wrote that the record is "full of the kind of catchy modern pop that is impossible to dislike or dislodge... most of the tunes are cocktail bangers hot enough to melt ice." According to The Independent Andy Gill, the album "seeks too hard to display Mars' multifaceted talents".
Eric Henderson criticized Doo-Wops & Hooligans in Slant Magazine, saying that it "manages to wear out its welcome about halfway through" and calling it an attempt to "please just about everybody." He gave the album two-and-a-half stars out of 5. With the same rating, Jamie Milton of musicOMH wrote that it "involves throwing everything into the fire", "a contrast taken too far". Milton called it "opportunistic... regardless of any forthcoming trends in pop, there's a song on the album pitched to take grasp of it all." A Q reviewer who gave the album two out of five stars wrote, "Mostly, he has little to say." The Guardians Alexis Petridis also gave it two out of five stars due to Mars' "saccharine sound" and poor lyrical composition. According to Petridis, the album should have been more "groundbreaking". The Scotsman and Mike Diver of the BBC said that Mars could have made an album for mass appreciation. The Scotsman reviewer wished that Mars had recorded something more "sophisticated"; Diver said that the album is not suitable for "anyone with life and love experience beyond passing notes around at the back of class".

Accolades

The album's lead single, "Just The Way You Are", received the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance award at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011 and received the Top Radio Song award at the 2011 Billboard Music Awards. Doo-Wops & Hooligans was nominated for the International Album of the Year award at the 2011 Danish GAFFA Awards, Best Album Pop Rock International at the 2012 Swiss Music Awards, and received two nominations for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards in 2012. The album's second single, "Grenade", received three nominations for the 2012 Grammys. Rolling Stones Jody Rosen and Bill Lamb of About.com called the album one of the year's best debuts. Lamb praised Mars' vocals and most of the melodies as "surefire", calling Mars a "creative artist" and saying that on his next album the singer could "stretch the horizons further and deliver truly memorable songs". Rosen described the songs as "near-perfect", "mov from power ballads to bedroom anthems... Call it bubblegum that eats like a meal." In November 2013, the Doo-Wops & Hooligans artwork designed by Nick Bilardello was 31st on Complex "50 Best Pop Album Covers of the Past Five Years". Susan Cheng wrote that Mars would have an enduring career, as "depicted in the path left behind by a black jet on the cover" of the album, whose "sunny hues convey a sense of self-confidence and the singer's outlook on the road ahead... the silhouette in the lower right, presumably a representation of Bruno Mars, reveals humility in the wake of so much success."

Commercial performance

Doo-Wops & Hooligans debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, with sales of 55,000 on its October 13, 2010 issue date in the United States. It topped Billboards Top Catalog Albums chart; it remained at number one for 11 weeks, surpassing Bob Marley and the Wailers’ compilation album Legend for the most weeks at number one in 2013. The album had the second-longest stretch at number one for a male artist, behind Michael Jackson’s 2003 greatest-hits album Number Ones. During the week of February 5, 2014, sales of Doo-Wops & Hooligans increased by 303% and it rebounded to number 19 on the Billboard 200. The album was certified quintuple platinum for sales and streaming figures equivalent to five million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America in June 2016, and sold 2,626,000 million copies in the United States by July 2017. As of December 11, 2019, Doo-Wops & Hooligans and Nirvana's Nevermind both spent 450 weeks on the Billboard 200, being the third-longest-charting albums in history of original material. According to the RIAA, the album was the ninth highest certified album of the 2010s decade.
In Canada, it debuted at number six. After fluctuating on the chart, the album reached number one four months later on February 5, 2011. It has been certified triple platinum by Music Canada. The album debuted at number five, peaked at number two and was certified six times platinum in New Zealand. It debuted at number seven in Australia, peaked at number two and was certified quadruple platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association for shipments of 280,000 copies.
Doo-Wops & Hooligans debuted in the United Kingdom at number 79 on October 24, 2010, with first-week sales of 6,775 imported copies. On its first chart week of 2011, it replaced Rihanna's Loud at number one and spent another week atop the chart. Doo-Wops & Hooligans was 2011's second million-selling album in the UK. It was the year's third-bestselling album, with sales of 1.2 million copies. As of November 2016, the album sold 1,712,854 copies and in 2018 it was certified sixtuple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry. It debuted atop the Irish and Scottish album charts and it was certified four times platinum by the Irish Recording Music Association.
In the Philippines, Doo-Wops & Hooligans received a double-diamond certification from the Philippine Association of the Record Industry in March 2014 for sales of 300,000 copies and is the country's seventh-bestselling album. It topped the charts in Flanders, Croatia, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. The album sold 500,000 copies in Germany, and was certified quintuple gold by the BVMI. It reached the top 10 in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, and was certified double platinum by IFPI Denmark. By 2012, Doo-Wops & Hooligans had sold more than six million copies worldwide.

Track listing

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Doo-Wops & Hooligans.
Technical and composing credits
Creative credits
Recording personnel

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Chart Position
Australian Albums 3
Austrian Albums 10
Belgian Albums 5
Belgian Albums 38
Canadian Albums 6
Danish Albums 8
Dutch Albums 5
German Albums 4
New Zealand Albums 2
Spanish Albums 44
Swiss Albums 4
Swedish Albums 45
UK Albums 3
US Billboard 20012

Chart Position
Australian Albums 25
Belgian Albums 80
New Zealand Albums 15
Swiss Albums 50
US Billboard 20060
US Billboard Catalog Albums35

Chart Position
Australian Albums 55
Japanese Albums 73
New Zealand Albums 45
US Billboard 20073
US Billboard Catalog Albums2

Chart Position
Swedish Albums 92
US Billboard 20087

Chart Position
Swedish Albums 77
US Billboard 20094

Chart Position
Danish Albums 77
Swedish Albums 78
US Billboard 20047

Chart Position
Danish Albums 76
Swedish Albums 84
US Billboard 20088

Chart Position
Danish Albums 81
Japanese Albums 97
Swedish Albums 80
US Billboard 200120

Chart Position
Belgian Albums 101
Danish Albums 87
Swedish Albums 100
US Billboard 200167

Decade-end charts

All-time charts

Certifications

Release history