Bruno Mars released his fourth solo studio album, “The Romantic,” on February 27, 2026. It marked his first solo album in a decade, and it has clearly been resonating with fans. The lead single hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January, and now he’s hit another milestone. 

“Risk It All” has launched at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 Chart. It also reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, making it his 22nd top-10 hit, and topped the Streaming Songs chart, his fifth No. 1 on that metric. 

“Notably, as Mars tops Streaming Songs with ‘Risk It All’ and Radio Songs with ‘I Just Might,’ he’s the first artist to lead the lists with different songs since the charts dated Nov. 11 and 18, 2023, when Taylor Swift did so with ‘Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) [From the Vault]’ and ‘Cruel Summer,’ respectively,” Billboard reports. 

As the first track on “The Romantic,” “Risk It All” sets the album’s intimate themes and musical backdrop. Rolling Stone says the album “taps into his Latin roots like never before,” and Mars digs into them from the jump. “Risk It All” begins with a rich nylon-string guitar, brassy horns, and stirring strings. 

“Immediately, it evokes a Mexican bolero, which is a romantic ballad that originated in Cuba and became popularized by Mexican musicians like Agustín Lara and, later, Javier Solís,” Rolling Stone explains.

During a Romantic Radio segment for iHeart Radio, Mars explained that there were actually three genres that brought the song together. The ingredients came together to make a kind of portrait of Mars himself.

First, he found the pocket in the rhythm of the bolero, which has steady eighth notes with a sixteenth-note triplet on the “and” of 1.

“Step two, bring in the strings and the orchestration. Growing up over half of my life in Los Angeles, I was lucky to be exposed to another genre of music called mariachi, which originates from Mexico, that I instantly fell in love with it. And, of course, my love for R&B and jazz: Black American music that has influenced everyone and everything.”

The soul of the song can easily be found in Mars’s heartfelt delivery of lyrics like “Say you want the moon, watch me learn to fly.” While his highest notes come during the tension-building pre-chorus, he adds drama to the ultimate line “I’d risk it all for you” by landing on an E when the chord resolves to the tonic DMaj7. The interval he sings is a 9th, which adds a sense of longing before he completes the line on the root note.

More than just the music, Mars built an entire world around the song.

“In the music video for ‘Risk It All,’ Mars incorporates a ton of visual nods to Mexican culture, including a full-on mariachi band and a Virgen de Guadalupe gold chain.” The music video also portrays a wedding, with People magazine saying it’s the singer’s tactic to make sure his music “continues to play at weddings for the foreseeable future.”

Watch the video and get into the groove with the score for “Risk It All.”