Bruno Mars: Grenade

Bruno Mars is probably one of the most talented current male singers out there. He is right up next to Sam Smith, Hozier, and Fall Out Boy. One of my favorite songs by him was put out a couple years ago, called "Grenade" and it was an instant hit.

When I first listened to this song, I also took it to mean that he's singing about a girl he's in love with and she just takes him for granted and abuses him in so many ways, and yet he can't let her go.

However, after listening to it a few times and really thinking about what the lyrics could actually mean, I believe it's not so much about a man who loves, in his words, a "bad woman," but instead about a man who is completely obsessed with this woman.

You can see this right in the very beginning when he says he should have known she was this way because she had her eyes open during their first kiss. He asks why were her eyes open, but the only way he would know hers were open is if his were also open. Him saying that should have been the signal she was bad seems a little obsessive and almost threatening. I can almost hear the persona from the song cornering this woman and aggressively asking "why were your eyes open?? why didn't you close your eyes??"


Next he says that all he ever wanted was for her to give him ALL of her love, and that's it. "I just wanted you to love me unconditionally. Why couldn't you do that for me??" 


The chorus goes on to say he would do all of these things for this woman (intercepting a grenade, jumping in front of a train, getting shot in the head) and it's a little too obsessive. Imagine if you were to just start seeing someone and after two weeks s/he was already saying they would die for you and they don't want to live unless it's with you. Granted, we don't know exactly how long the characters have been together, but it's still a very unhealthy way to look at a relationship.

So really, to me, it sounds like this man came on too strong to this girl in the early part of the relationship and she felt uneasy and maybe that she was in danger, so she decided to stop seeing him. As a result, we hear the story of an extremely sick and obsessive man wondering why she couldn't feel the same way about him as he did about her.