John Bankston - Bruno Mars: Singer

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Bruno Mars was 17-years old and he already had a music deal. He was miserable.

"He was clearly talented, but there was no control as to where he was going," songwriter Philip Lawrence told Reuters in 2010, remembering when they first met. Mars spent months working on his music. Nothing happened.

"I thought I'd go to Hollywood, sing for someone and that's it, I'm playing Madison Square Garden... There was no Plan B," Mars admitted in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone magazine. "You might have caught me at some restaurant with a guitar, but no matter where I ended up, this is what it was going to be."

Mars grew up in Hawaii, performing with his family in some of the most popular hotels on the state's most populated island. Besides singing across Waikiki, he even appeared in the 1992 movie Honeymoon in Vegas sporting a blue jumpsuit and imitating music legend Elvis Presley. He was six-years old.

In 2003, he'd barely picked up his diploma from President Theodore Roosevelt High School before boarding a plane to Los Angeles, California. There, he hoped to have a career in the music business. His sister helped him get his music to an executive at Motown Records, who signed Mars to a recording contract.

He'd grown up on music by Motown legends like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. "It's like the dream coming true," he told Paper in 2012. "I felt like they just signed me and shelved me. You have no money and you're trying to figure out what happens."

Working in the recording studio, he'd reminded many of his idol: Prince. Like Prince, Mars played many of his own instruments including guitar, piano and drums. Unfortunately, just as Prince once had, Mars spent long, expensive hours in the studio trying to make his music perfect. "I was just brewing and learning," he told Paper. "Every song [I wrote] was some R&B love song." Less than a year after signing with Motown, the label dropped him.

Prince in 2008 at Coachella

Source: Flickr: penner

"I never put the blame on them," he told The Boston Globe in 2010."It was my fault. I wasn't ready yet. I don't know who's ready at the age of 18. And to be the kind of artist I wanted to be, it's too young."

Shifting Gears

Mars wasn't even 20-years old and he was worried his career was over. He was almost out of money and he couldn't land another music deal. Yet his time at Motown Record wasn't a waste. It introduced him to Philip Lawrence. The songwriter had noticed that Mars was more than just a talented singer but a skilled guitarist, pianist, and drummer. He thought they should team up and create music either for themselves or for other artists. To Mars, it made perfect sense.

"I didn't grow up writing songs in a room by myself. I was always with a bunch of people," Mars explained to Billboard magazine in October of 2012. "Until I got to L.A., I didn't even write songs. I needed someone to bounce ideas off of, and I found the best guys. We're not really a production team. We're a band. We just go in there and jam and write a song. Taking a little idea, a melody, a beat, and building, building, building is the most satisfying thing ever."

Sound engineer Ari Levine soon joined them, ensuring that the final music tracks called "demos" would be as polished as possible. They called themselves the Smeezingtons.

"Why not the Smeezingtons is the real question?" he joked with The Globe. "The root word is smash. We're always joking around in the studio and we'd say, 'Oh, this song's going to be a smash!' And then it turned into smeeze and then smash and smeeze made a baby and therefore now it's the Smeezingtons."

Bruno Mars and The Smeezingtons at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, Los Angeles. February 12, 2012

Source: Shutterstock

Bands need a "gig"getting paid to perform before an audience at a club or a bar. The Smeezingtons needed a client. Getting any job without experience is difficult. The music business is no different. In 2008, K'Naan was an up-and-coming hip hop artist and songwriter whose debut album had been successful in Canada. He met with the Smeezingtons and listened to the song they thought he should record. He hated it. That could have been the end of it. "I didn't walk out because they're hilarious," he told The Village Voice in 2010. "But they were amazing after that."

They all returned to the studio, working on other songs. The next one they presented, K'Naan liked. Speaking to the Honolulu Advertiser two years later, Mars remembered that, "K'naan really gave us a break when we needed it. He was the first guy we produced for, and he came in with an open heart. We were real newbies. He didn't know who we were. He was a new artist with a lot to offer, but he stuck with us and we just worked and worked together."

Although "Wavin' Flag" was the only song of theirs that K'naan recorded, it literally got global attention when it became the 2010 FIFA World Cup official anthem. Besides writing the song heard during soccer's biggest contest, the Smeezingtons had also written hit songs for Brandy and Flo Rida. Sometimes Mars wished he could sing the songs himself, but he was happy with the money he was earning. He knew he'd come a long way in just a few short years, back when he was living in a rundown Hawaiian house without running water or electricity.

Up on the Stage

Visitors to Hawaii's Waikiki Sheraton in the late 1980s were often awestruck by a talented four-year-old. Sharing the stage with his family, the boy they called "Bruno" did covers of Elvis Presley songs. He dressed in sequined jackets just like the 1950s singer. He even copied his hairstyle. Even then, Bruno was someone who loved the spotlight. "It was a goof," he told USA Today in 2010. "I didn't look anything like him, but people got a kick out of it."

Bruno Mars was born Peter Gene Hernandez was born on October 8, 1985, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father admitted that he dimmed the lights in the delivery room so it would look like a nightclub while classic rock played on a boombox.

Honolulu, Hawaii

Source: Shutterstock

Bruno was a middle child. His older brother Eric was born in 1976. His older sister Jaime was born in 1983, while Tiara was born one year before Bruno. Tahiti arrived in 1987 and the baby of the family, Presley, was born in 1990. None of Bruno's five brothers and sisters wanted to be onstage as much as he did. "All my kids sing but they're shy," his mother told