Bruno Mars Opens The Romantic Tour at Sold-Out MetLife Stadium

Bruno Mars opened The Romantic Tour on Friday at a sold-out MetLife Stadium, the first of four scheduled nights. The show did not save its spectacle for a final act. Fireworks, pyrotechnics, and confetti were spread across the set, which Mars framed around love rather than a traditional greatest-hits arc.

He opened with “Risk It All” in a bright red charro suit, then moved through “24K Magic” and “Treasure,” where the Hooligans’ choreography carried much of the visual weight. A later conga break on “Cha Cha” connected directly to his father, Peter Hernandez, a Brooklyn salsa percussionist. The show’s clearest Latin music statement came with “Something Serious,” which wove Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe’s “La Murga” with riffs from “La Bamba” and “La Pulga,” closing on a Santana-like guitar solo.

Mars also brought out Anderson .Paak for a Silk Sonic segment, introduced by Bootsy Collins. The two ran through “777,” “Fly As Me,” and “Smokin Out the Window,” then traded solos on “Leave the Door Open” with their usual rehearsal-level precision.

Across nearly two hours, Mars treated the stadium less as a platform for escalation and more as a setting large enough to hold salsa history, slow jams, and Vegas-grade choreography at once. It was a show built to make the past feel like part of the production, not a sample buried inside it.