YOUR FAVOURITE MTV SHOWS ARE NOW AVAILABLE ON PARAMOUNT+

Album Review: Mark Ronson's 'Uptown Special' Is About More Than Just Bruno Mars

Is Mark Ronson’s new album as ground breaking as the song that defines it?

It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Mark Ronson entered the New Year with a lemsip in one hand and a warm flannel in the other. The back end of 2014 must have hit the guy like a forklift truck, with every release date around the name ‘Uptown’ dragged forward.

Now, ahead of ‘Uptown Special’s official release, Mark Ronson is streaming the new album via The Guardian and with it comes a self written track-by-track break down. You can listen and read here.

Is Uptown Funk a blue whale, lazily ingesting a sea of upstream swimming plankton? Has the sea juggernaut that is Fleur East finally polluted what could have been Mark Ronson’s best record to date?

[related]No. Uptown Funk is of course the stand out track, because we’ve heard it a thousand times. There’s that familiarity that runs in the veins of Bruno Mars’ opening “ba bah bum”, but there’s no harm in them, as they only serve as a kick to the eardrums after Stevie Wonder’s opening track.

Let’s revisit that sentence. Stevie Wonder is on the album’s opening track. Stevie Wonder. The blind, braided soul legend who brings joy wherever he appears is on a Mark Ronson track. Wow. Opening and closing the album, Stevie Wonder sets the score for Uptown Special to be the throwback banger that it is from Uptown's First Finale to Crack In The Pearl Pt II.

[related]Wonder and Mars (who sound like a 70s crime fighting duo) are by far the biggest names on the album. Their vocals are unmistakeable, and the groove that seeps through their sound is unstoppable, but what they do best is highlight the calibre of the rest of the guest vocalists.

From disgraced daughter of a deep South preacher Keyone Starr making ‘I Can’t Lose’ sound like a roly-poly of Prince, Daft Punk and The Ronettes to Kanye’s melody writer Jeff Bhasker stepping up alongside Stevie, the choice of +1s on Uptown Funk make it the generation surfing album that it's going to become - with or without the help of Bruno Mars.

Latest News