Bruno Mars and Rosé served their Song of the Year contender APT with a twist at last night’s Grammy Awards, opening the show with a new hard rock arrangement of the 2024 smash.
Right from the off, it was clear that this was going to be a very different interpretation of the song, with Mars wielding a Gibson Les Paul and playing a heavier riff as it began.
His exuberance was more than matched by Rosé, who bounded round the stage and appeared to be having the time of her life.
Would there be room for a Bruno guitar break, though? Of course there would: Mars demonstrated his chops at the start of an extended bridge section, hammering-on, pulling-off and tapping for all he was worth.
Although it’s now hard to imagine APT without Mars on it, speaking after the song’s release, producer Cirkut, who won the Producer of the Year award at last night’s Grammys, confirmed that he wasn’t initially involved.
“It was my first time working with Rosie [Rosé],” he told Music Week when discussing the song’s origins. “We had a batch of sessions over the course of a few weeks, and we’d been trying out different ideas - songs which might see the light of day at some point! - before we came up with APT.
“It was the end of our third session or so, and Rosie, Theron Thomas, Amy Allen, Omer Fedi, Rogét Chahayed and I [co-writers] had been working on a different song all day. We were all so tired, but as we were wrapping up, Rosie was telling someone about this Korean drinking game called APT, saying it rhythmically, like ‘A-P-T, A-P-T’. Theron turned around and was like, ‘Wait! What’s that?’”
And so APT was born, with Mars getting involved a little later.
“I don’t know who played it for him, but he and I had worked together before so he texted me, like, ‘Yo, I heard you’re involved with APT, I love it!’,” says Cirkut. “He said he had some ideas and was like, ‘I’ll be in the studio next week!’”
It wasn’t a phoned-in guest vocal spot that Mars had in mind, either - he really wanted to go to work.
“When Bruno gets involved in something, he’s not just a feature, he becomes a part of it,” says Cirkut. “He’s an amazing musician, a producer, a songwriter, an incredible performer - and he’s also hilarious.”
The performance of APT at the Grammys was one of two that Mars gave last night. He would return to the stage later on to sing his latest smash, I Just Might.
