5 Reasons Why... Bruno Mars has ruined everything for everyone.

1.       Reminding everyone that Jack Johnson continues to exist. Mars’s appropriation of Johnson’s twee, syncopated sound calls to mind a surfer dude trying to impress girls round a beach campfire by strumming ‘Wonderful Tonight’ while topless. If the mental image of that opportunistic berk stealing your girlfriend by playing ‘Just the Way You Are’ and rippling his abs doesn’t make you want to kick Mars in his ill-deserved balls, then you probably are that opportunistic berk.

2.       He would lie to your face and feel no guilt. Mars’s glassy, pacifying smile is the smile of an experienced conman, grinning encouragingly as he explains how his pyramid scheme is a chance you can’t afford to miss. It is the smile of an adulterer explaining away those late nights and suspect stains to his adoring wife while his kids play behind them. It is the smile a deranged killer would wear as he slid a knife between your ribs.

3.       The video for ‘The Lazy Song’. When a song contains the line, “Throw my hand in my pants/’Cause no-one’s gonna tell me I can’t”, and the phrase, “really nice sex”, it’s probably best to write it off as a bad job, put it in the bottom of a drawer full of other bad things and then throw that drawer into a disused quarry. What you should not do is release it as a single, then compound the wrongness with a video which includes dancers wearing monkey masks. This kind of self-consciously ‘wacky’ nonsense suggests Mars is the kind of man who would laugh uproariously at “You don’t have to be mad to work here...BUT IT HELPS!!!!” signs. Later, a man whom I can only assume Mars keeps as some sort of pet wanders in and mucks about. One gets the impression Mars is taking advantage of this poor man’s diminished mental capacity. The effect is deeply troubling and depressing.

4.       His hats. Hats in pop have a long and divisive history. The good include the Specials’ trilbies, Noddy Holder’s mirrored top hat and Pet Shop Boys’ stripey cones. The bad include the new Razorlight bass player’s enormous floppy brown affair which makes him look like Worzel Gummidge. The god-awful include the kind of brimless straw things perpetrated by Olly Murs and Mars. WHAT IS THE POINT OF A HAT WHICH DOESN’T EVEN KEEP THE SUN OUT OF YOUR EYES. THAT IS SURELY A HAT’S RAISON D’ETRE. What makes his be-hatted nature even more unforgivable is that he has a genuinely amazing pompadour quiff. Unconfirmed reports suggest government plans are being drawn up to reassign it to more deserving and grateful celebrities. The shortlist includes Neil Tennant, Matt Lucas, Greg Wallace, and Lulu.

5.       Giving girls unrealistic expectations of boys’ levels of devotion. It’s hard enough trying to get a girlfriend without downright liars like Mars spouting nonsense about taking grenades for them. Although on the up-side if Mars ever was in a combat situation, he’d explosively disembowel himself almost immediately, saving me the bother.