He arrives in red, not on stage, neither in a stadium. Seated on a wooden chair, acoustic guitar across his lap, a mariachi band standing behind him against a turquoise wall.
The trumpets haven’t fired yet. He’s just sitting there, like a man who’s already decided.
That’s the opening image of the “Risk It All” video, and it tells you most of what you need to know about where this song lives. The horns come in. Mars doesn’t flinch.
“Risk It All” opens The Romantic, his first solo album since 24K Magic in 2016, and the placement is deliberate.
This is a man who spent a decade away from solo records, collaborated with Anderson .Paak on the Silk Sonic project that swept the 2022 Grammys, and then returned to find critics waiting with a specific question: what exactly has changed?
The answer on “Risk It All” is: the scale, not the approach. The production, co-built with D’Mile, leans on bolero structure: measured brass, live percussion that breathes rather than drives, gentle guitar licks beneath a vocal arrangement that puts his upper register to work early.
At moments he sounds close to Marc Anthony, and that’s not a coincidence. Mars is Puerto Rican on his father’s side, and the Latin influence here is a real choice, not set dressing.
The lyric is where the criticism lands. He opens with a pledge so total it borders on surrender: “For just the chance to win your heart / You could set the bar beyond the stars / I’ll do anything, anything you ask me to.” He will do anything. He will climb any mountain. He will swim any sea.
The pre-chorus makes the escalation explicit: “Say you want the moon / Watch me learn to fly / Ain’t no mountain you could point to / I wouldn’t climb.”
The honest take is that “Risk It All” does not contain a surprising line. It contains nothing that a sharp songwriter couldn’t have written in an afternoon.
After a decade away, some listeners will find that a problem.
The bridge is where it tips furthest: “I would swim across the sea just to show you / Sacrifice my life just to hold you.”
The song is either most sincere or most exposed here, depending on your tolerance for grand romantic gesture.
The chorus doesn’t hedge at all: “It’s crazy, but it’s true / There’s nothing I won’t do / I’d risk it all for you.” The acknowledgment that it’s crazy is the only concession Mars makes to self-awareness. Then he moves on.
What the cliché argument tends to underweight is that bolero as a form has always traded in exactly this kind of language. The whole point is the declaration, not the complexity. Mars knows this.
“Risk It All” is a declaration of unconditional devotion, delivered with total conviction and no attempt to soften its excess.
When the high note arrives in the final chorus, he has been holding back for three minutes, and the vocal performance is where the depth lives, not the lyric sheet.
It was a genuine risk to open his first solo record in a decade with an understated ballad. It pays off.
This is a slow-burning song in the tradition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, not structurally, but spiritually. Both songs hinge on total conviction delivered without irony. The power comes not from lyrical invention, but from standing fully inside the statement.
The video, co-directed by Mars and Daniel Ramos, runs through a complete romantic arc: courtship, a church ceremony at the Guardian Angel P.N. Catholic Church, confetti on the steps, domestic scenes, and eventually an older couple holding their wedding photograph.
What Mars has done is make a video that treats the song’s premise as visual fact. The wedding happens. The years pass. The couple holds the photograph. The camera doesn’t editorialize.
The chorus insists: “There’s nothing I won’t do.” The video takes that at its word. It ends with the two of them sitting together in the dark, watching footage of themselves in their youth. The lyric stays in the conditional throughout. The video doesn’t.
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