This morning, Bruno Mars blessed the world with 24k Magic, an album filled with slinky vocoders, throwback school-dance slow jams, and a full cornucopia of James Brown grunts, wheezes, and “Look out!“s. It’s one of the happiest, most immediately satisfying releases of the year, and it’s also one of the … well, look, Bruno Mars just seems like a guy who really likes to bone.
Yes, 24k Magic is a great pop-funk album, and it is a virtual compendium of Bruno Mars’s horniness. There are only nine songs, and a solid six of them are about having sex, dancing, or dancing and then having sex. Below, we’ve collected nine of 24k Magic’s most shamelessly libidinous lines.
“Activate your sexy,” from “Perm”
“Perm,” 24k Magic‘s swaggering James Brown homage, is far from the horniest song on the album, but the call-and-response instructions of the bridge give a taste of what’s to come. As far as what activating your sexy actually entails, you’ll have to use your imagination.
“Sex by the fire at night / Silk sheets and diamonds, all white,” from “That’s What I Like”
On the chorus for his ode to opulence “That’s What I Like,” Bruno conjures an image straight out of “The Love-ahs” with Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch. He doesn’t explicitly mention a bearskin rug in his “sex by the fire” fantasy, but if you close your eyes, you can almost feel the bristly fur.
“I love that dress, but you won’t need it anymore,” from “Versace on the Floor”
Halfway through the album, Mars fully unfurls his freak flag for the first time on the boner ballad “Versace on the Floor.” This line might not look like much on paper, but wait until you hear Bruno belting it out like getting undressed is a matter of life and death.
“It’s warming up / Can you feel it? / It’s warming up / Can you feel it? / It’s warming up / Can you feel it, baby?” from “Versace on the Floor”
Can you feel it? Can you?
“Let’s just kiss ’til we’re naked,” from “Versace on the Floor”
When I was a young kid, I thought “having sex” literally just meant getting naked and kissing, until maybe something else happened. Sounds like Bruno Mars has the same idea.
“Girl, I bet your mama named you ‘Good Lookin” / ‘Cause you sure look good to me,” from “Straight Up and Down”
There’s a whole genre of hacky pickup lines that are structured like this: “Is your dad a traffic cop? Because you have fine written all over you,” or “Your mother must be a thief, because it looks like she stole all the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.” This lyric is kind of like one of those lines, but without even their incredibly lame attempts at wordplay. Mars might as well be singing “Is your name hot? Because you’re hot.”
“Your booty deserve a celebration, and I’m gonna celebrate it all night long,” from “Straight Up and Down”
Fortunately, Bruno redeems himself with this line later in “Straight Up and Down.” Every booty deserves a celebration, really.
“Freakin’ me baby, while I’m freakin’ you,” from “Straight Up and Down”
The “while” in this line is sort of superfluous: Usually, when two people are freakin’ each other, the freakin’ is happening at the same time. What would be really impressive is if she was freakin’ him first, and then he was freakin’ her later.
“I got Alicia waiting, Ayesha waiting / All the ‘eshas waiting on me,” from “Calling All My Lovelies”
Calling all ‘eshas. Bruno Mars is waiting on you.
