Before he was Bruno Mars, he was Honolulu's four-year-old Little Elvis
At four, Peter Hernandez was playing five nights a week with his family's band in Waikiki, famous locally for his Elvis impression. His father nicknamed him Bruno after a wrestler. Years of songwriting for others later, Bruno Mars has sold over 150 million records and collected 16 Grammy Awards.
He was born in Honolulu on October 8, 1985. His parents, a hula dancer and a percussionist, met while appearing in the same show, and all six children grew up hearing reggae, hip-hop, R&B and old rock and roll. An uncle who impersonated Elvis coaxed the three-year-old onstage. Local press dubbed him Little Elvis in 1990, and he landed a cameo in the film Honeymoon in Vegas. When his parents divorced he was 12, the family band folded, and for a while he, his brother and father lived in a car and inside a closed bird park.
He moved to Los Angeles in 2003 after an Aftermath Entertainment executive heard his demo. He picked his stage name partly to dodge being pigeonholed as a Latin act, joking that girls said he was out of this world. A Motown deal in 2004 fizzled within a year. The producer Steve Lindsey then spent years schooling him in what makes a pop hit. With Philip Lawrence he began writing for other artists, and selling a single song to a reunited Menudo for 20,000 dollars in 2008 kept them afloat. Flo Rida's Right Round became their first big success.
Singing the hook on B.o.B's Nothin' on You, a US number one in 2009, turned him into a solo name. Doo-Wops and Hooligans followed in 2010, bringing Just the Way You Are and Grenade, and 24K Magic won the Grammy for Album of the Year. He featured on Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk, which Billboard named its best-performing song of the 2010s, and formed Silk Sonic with Anderson .Paak in 2021.
Duets with Lady Gaga and Rosé in 2024 broke records, and in 2026 The Romantic became his first solo album in ten years. He has ten Billboard Hot 100 number ones and was the first artist to earn six diamond-certified songs in the US.
Source: Bruno Mars
