Soul Train Awards 2023: 6 Tracks That Capture the Magic When Bruno Mars, Anderson.Paak Come Together

The funk ballad is the duo’s most successful single off the album An Evening with Silk Sonic. The track won four Grammys, including “Record of the Year,” “Song of the Year,” “Best R&B Performance,” and “Best R&B Song” in 2022. It also won “Song of the Year” at the Soul Train Awards 2021. Mars and Paak’s vocals in the song are crisp and reminiscent of the soulful tones of the 70s.

In this sensual track emulating a 70s song about an intimate night, Paak and Mars croon about a night they cannot get off their mind. To add even more of a retro feel to the song, they enlist Bootsy Collins to provide the vocals and singer-songwriter/producer Thundercat.

The R&B track comes directly after “After Last Night” on their debut album An Evening with Silk Sonic, and begins with Bootsy Collins complaining the love interest he once praised on “After Last Night” is not who she once was. Mars and Paak sing about betrayal and show a different side of the love they once believed was true. Paak adds his usual humor to the tune, creating a scene showing pain and comic relief.

Like “Smoking out the WIndow” and “After Last Night,” Bootsy Collins opens the song. The track is much more melancholy than many other songs on their debut album. In the record, Mars sings about struggling to put on a smile while he deals with her heartbreak. The song’s bittersweet melody resembles songs of the 70s about the bittersweet romance going sour, and it does it with a modern twist from the duo.

In this head-bopping, catchy, funky track, Paak and Mars offer the perfect amount of confidence and swag as they sing about no one being as fly as them. The groovy song has a hook that draws you in from start to finish. Paak’s natural humor adds the perfect touch to the tune when he asks the band to spell out F-L-Y to emphasize that no one has ever seen anybody as fly as him.

In this groovy record, the song brings the listener back to the 70s-esque roller rink as Mars and Paak sing to a love interest to skate over to them. Mars told Apple Music that the song is the essence of the album. “If Andy and I were to host a party, what would that look like?  Summertime. Outside. Set up the congas, drums, and amplifiers, and what would that sound like? And this is what our best effort was: ‘Skate.’ The track gives the summertime feel they were looking for.

Bruno Mars and Anderson.Paak are two artists who have respectively made their mark in the industry, whether it be Anderson.Paaks’s Grammy award-winning album Ventura and his songs with Anderson.Paak and The Free Nationals or Bruno Mars’s Grammy Award-winning album “24k Magic'' took the industry by storm.