Celebrated pop and R&B singer Bruno Mars will be performing three concert dates in Florida at the end of this month, closing out the North American leg of his Moonshine Jungle World Tour. He will be performing…
Bruno Mars comes to Florida
Singer Brings “Moonshine Jungle Tour” to Orlando, Tampa, Miami
by: Mike Halterman
Celebrated pop and R&B singer Bruno Mars will be performing three concert dates in Florida at the end of this month, closing out the North American leg of his Moonshine Jungle World Tour. He will be performing on Tuesday, August 27 at 7:30 p.m. at the Amway Center in Orlando; Wednesday, August 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa; and Friday, August 30 at 8 p.m. at the American Airlines Arena in Miami. Fitz & The Tantrums will be opening for Bruno Mars at all three concert dates.
Since breaking onto the scene as a featured singer on two different popular singles in 2010, Bruno Mars has amassed 37 different awards, including a Grammy Award, an American Music Award and a Billboard Music Award. He has sold a total of over 8 million albums and 58 million singles worldwide. He broke Nielsen SoundScan records with his debut single (which went five times platinum in the United States), allowing him to be named the best-selling digital artist for the year 2011.
Bruno Mars, born Peter Gene Hernandez, is originally from Honolulu, Hawaii. He was nicknamed 
“Bruno” at a young age by his father, who thought he looked like the pro wrestler Bruno Sammartino. When he moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to start his professional singing career, he added “Mars” to his stage name because, as he said in Rap-Up magazine, “…a lot of girls say I’m out of this world, so I was like, I guess I’m from Mars.” He credits Elvis Presley as his top musical influence, with Michael Jackson and Little Richard playing big roles in the formation of his musical style as well.
He was originally unsuccessful upon his arrival on the mainland. When asked about those lean times by Entertainment Weekly in 2010, he remembered, “I’d always been a working musician in Hawaii and never had problems paying rent. And then it’s like, ‘Now I’m in L.A. and my phone’s getting shut off.’ That’s when reality hit. I started DJing. It was something silly. I told this person I could DJ because they said they could pay me $75 cash under the table. I didn’t know how to DJ. I lost that job pretty quick.” By 2005, he realized that writing songs for other artists may be the best way for him to put his foot in the door, and he partnered with Philip Lawrence in a songwriting and producing group called “The Smeezingtons.”
He started writing songs for artists as wide-ranging as Adam Levine to Brandy to The Sugababes to Flo Rida; his work with Adam Levine allowed him to open for Maroon 5 in the earliest stages of his singing success in 2010. He broke into the mainstream after his vocals were featured on the songs “Nothin’ on You” by B.o.B. and “Millionaire” by Travie McCoy. He went on to release his full-length debut album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans, in October 2010. The album rose to #3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and ended up selling over six million copies. The album yielded such successful singles as “Just the Way You Are,” “Grenade,” and “The Lazy Song.” He won a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his song “Just the Way You Are.” At the same time, he helped Cee Lo Green write his popular and award-winning song “F–k You!”
Bruno Mars received more accolades at the end of 2012 and through 2013 with the release of his second album, Unorthodox Jukebox. The singles “Locked Out of Heaven” and “When I Was Your Man” topped the pop singles charts in the United States and a combined total of seventeen other countries, ranging from Mexico and Venezuela to Poland and Slovakia, and even Lebanon and South Korea. His most recent offering, the single “Treasure,” released in June, made it to the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100. Bruno Mars helped write and produce his own album with the help of “The Smeezingtons.” His “Moonshine Jungle Tour” encompasses 88 concert dates and will end in March 2014.
If you’d like to purchase a ticket to one of the Bruno Mars concert dates, you’re in luck, because there are still tickets available as of press time. If you buy your tickets via www.ticketmaster.com, there are still seats available at the Tampa Bay Times Forum from $68.35; at the Amway Center from $64.65; and at the American Airlines Arena from $79.85.
