Hit Parade: Lenny on Mars Edition Part 2

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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What do Lenny Kravitz, a hitmaker primarily in the ’90s and ’00s, and Bruno Mars, a 2010s–20s hitmaker, have in common? It turns out, a lot: Each man has a wide-ranging ethnic and musical background, with early exposure to unusual sides of showbiz. Each has scored hits in a variety of styles. They are admirers of each other’s work and have even performed live together. But the main thing Lenny and Bruno have in common is their skill—some might say habit—of borrowing tropes and styles from hitmakers of the past. Kravitz from the very start of his career emulated the rock stylings of his heroes, like John Lennon and Sly Stone. And Bruno Mars—talk about an Unorthodox Jukebox: His career has been a parade of hits whose sound has spanned from the Police to Rick James to Michael Jackson. Are they cultural appropriators, or genius style chameleons? Join Chris Molanphy as he chronicles two premier pop stylists of the last 30 years who wore genres like costumes and rebooted oldies into modern hits. Don’t believe them? Just watch. Podcast production by Kevin Bendis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Hey there, hip parade listeners, before we start the show, I want to let you know about
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0:14.9	reaching an exciting turning point? Are you ready to seize the moment for growth? Well,
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0:26.6	next. To learn more, head to SAP.com slash be ready and stick around to hear how the
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0:40.2	This episode is brought to you by Shopify. That's what I hear when I make another sale on
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0:52.5	Shopify is revolutionising millions of businesses worldwide. So sign up for a £1 per month
0:58.4	trial period at shopify.co.uk slash podcast 23 all lowercase and take your business to the
1:06.9	next level today.
1:10.1	Welcome back to hip parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits
1:25.4	from coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfee, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slates
1:30.8	Why is this song number one series on our last episode? We started to compare the hitmaking
1:37.6	careers of Lenny Kravitz and Bruno Mars, two showbiz kids, fellow admirers and genre
1:45.4	chameleons with more than 20 years separating them but a remarkable amount in common.
1:52.0	We walked through Kravitz's career in the 90s and aughts, the rock heroes of yesteryear
1:58.0	he emulated, and the criticism he received for his stylistic borrowings. We're now
2:04.4	into the late aughts when Lenny's career is on the wane, but Bruno's is primed to explode.
2:18.9	Lost was a song Bruno Mars originally intended to record for himself. He had already been
2:26.4	in LA for more than four years with little to show for it. Like Lenny Kravitz in his
2:33.0	Romeo blue face, he had played in cover bands, one of Bruno's regular troops was called
	...

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