The energy and just all around crazy fun of this jam totally reminds me of wild nights in clubs ..

I hope I get to see Bruno Mars someday .. totally fun this video

Why ‘Uptown Funk’ Is Immortal

Filed Under: Culture, Music, Billboard, Bruno Mars, Music Industry

The Billboard Hot 100 recently confirmed the dominance of the Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars collaboration when the song finished atop that chart for 14 weeks—one short of the all-time record. It doesn’t matter that “Uptown Funk” missed the milestone. Real proof of its immortality will come summer after summer: For the next quarter-century, it will persist as a choice wedding spin.

When “Uptown Funk” comes on, your kid sister will twerk, your giddy mom and drunken dad will do the Hustle, and cousins and friends will abandon cake and conversations to boogie. The song is an increasingly rare phenomenon, capable of uniting divergent demographics.

Which gives all of us hope for the future of mainstream art.

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The industry used to crank out unifying jams: Motown 45s, Stax singles, disco hits, most of Michael Jackson’s output between ’79 and ’88. Now we’re lucky if we get one a year.

Don’t blame the artists. Lily Allen’s “Sheezus” and Usher’s “Good Kisser” would have gone global a decade ago. Underground acts such as Animal Talk (you gotta hear “Tie Me Up”) blend rock, pop and disco as exquisitely as Duran Duran. But Top 40 radio has scaled back, no longer expanding playlists the way it once did. If Usher can’t find space between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, what chance does an unsigned band have?

People cite the decline of traditional radio as the reason we have fewer hits, yet we’ve actually had dozens of new Top 40 stations debut since the turn of the century; they just play the same songs over and over again. Fewer hits with more spins does not equal universal appeal. Hitting No. 1 is no guarantee of getting the party started. Slip on Perry’s “Roar” after “Billie Jean” and everybody hits the bar.

The marketplace for mainstream art has cracked into fragments, and even big niches like Top 40 radio, blockbuster movies and prime-time TV lack the cultural market share they once enjoyed. There will never be another Seinfeld, Star Wars or U2 (or even a new Calvin and Hobbes).

What’s wrong with this? Unlike politics, religion and sports, art can unite divergent demographics in four minutes. When a song’s gravitational pull gets our butts shaking, we connect with the collective. Old people feel part of a society dominated by youth culture. Young people see elders as something other than relics. The song creates an ephemeral flash where disparate groups get along because they’ve been spiked with the same euphoria. The moment leaves an echo.

Some summer Saturday night, whether you’re in your Saint Laurent suit or Chuck Taylors, “Uptown Funk” is gonna give it to you and everybody else on that dance floor. Don’t believe me? Just watch.

ya I like that song too .. sounds good in the car sereo

I must admit, I didn't care for the song when it first came out but it's grown on me. I still think it isn't as good as it could have been and is musically less than the sum of its parts, being more a compilation of sounds than a smooth blend but still the song is great for what it is: getting people to sing along and dance, something I can't help but do whenever I hear it. Not hearing it regularly for about 4 months helped too.

Reading this article made me like "Uptown Funk" that much more and it makes me happy that it helps to prove my (and many others') point about how mainstream music today is a shell of it's former self but that inherent feature is a bit disheartening at the same time. Another thing I noticed is that for the amount of sensation surrounding "Uptown Funk", the music industry has done a piss poor job of cashing in on it. I read in an article/ review of the Billboard Awards this year about how Bruno was in Vegas the day before the show for Rock in Rio yet they didn't book him to perform. The dude who sings lead on the song that has ruled the charts for 14 straight weeks wasn't invited to a show that awards chart success... WTF? Couldn't have anything disrupt the flow of the Taylor Swift show, huh? That entire show summed up the current state of affairs of the mainstream music scene: safe, boring, repetitive, and just more of the same. Uptown Funk falls into that category but a live Bruno performance of the song would have injected some much need life into that show.

MotownSubdivision said:

I must admit, I didn't care for the song when it first came out but it's grown on me. I still think it isn't as good as it could have been and is musically less than the sum of its parts, being more a compilation of sounds than a smooth blend but still the song is great for what it is: getting people to sing along and dance, something I can't help but do whenever I hear it. Not hearing it regularly for about 4 months helped too.

Reading this article made me like "Uptown Funk" that much more and it makes me happy that it helps to prove my (and many others') point about how mainstream music today is a shell of it's former self but that inherent feature is a bit disheartening at the same time. Another thing I noticed is that for the amount of sensation surrounding "Uptown Funk", the music industry has done a piss poor job of cashing in on it. I read in an article/ review of the Billboard Awards this year about how Bruno was in Vegas the day before the show for Rock in Rio yet they didn't book him to perform. The dude who sings lead on the song that has ruled the charts for 14 straight weeks wasn't invited to a show that awards chart success... WTF? Couldn't have anything disrupt the flow of the Taylor Swift show, huh? That entire show summed up the current state of affairs of the mainstream music scene: safe, boring, repetitive, and just more of the same. Uptown Funk falls into that category but a live Bruno performance of the song would have injected some much need life into that show.

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I'm still mad that apparently no one had in mind what I did when Prince promised "something special" for the Grammys. I don't know what that special something was (a new outfit) but it really became a sore spot for me concerning him. It being the 30th anniversary since he performed on the show, I was really hoping for something that everyone would be talking about. A throwback performance of "Baby I'm a Star" with all the usual players would've been nice. And with the awards penchant for old/new school collabs, a mash up of "Star/Uptown Funk" with The Hooligans would've still had people talking. I need to be a manager!

CynicKill said:

I think the proliferation of download culture really helps the award shows in terms of ratings. Sales may be down but people are listening to more music then ever.

CynicKill said:

I think more people are listening to music (at least the popular stuff) so they might be more invested in seeing who's going to perform at awards shows.

I mean if Megan Trainor has eight-hundred plus million views on Youtube, they might be interested in seeing her at awards time. It's not like the old days where if you didn't buy an album you didn't have access to it otherwise. Bruno Mars sold six million and counting albums of his latest. But millions more actually heard it. I think exposure equals eyeballs. I think it explains The Grammy's numbers, minus stunt casting.