Bruno Mars in Super Bowl 2016 halftime show again

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Sep 10, 2015 06:00 AM EDT
Tags Bruno Mars

Bruno Mars has been invited to perform during the NFL halftime show, the L.A. Times reports. If he accepts, this will be the second time the 29-year-old graces the NFL stage, with the first being back in February of last year. He was joined by special guests the Red Hot Chili Peppers during his performance at the Super Bowl XLVIII, which Nielsen reported to have garnered 115 million viewers. Bruno Mars holds the second highest viewership for the halftime show, following Katy Perry's performance earlier this year, which garnered 121 million viewers.

According to Billboard, director of media events for the NFL Sarah Moll was a "huge fan" of Bruno Mars, and it was her support that led them into talking about him coming in for the halftime show in 2014. This time, Mars is also invited to "curate" this year's 50th anniversary show and act as host for guest appearances, said the Bleacher Report. The highly anticipated event is set to take place on February 7 at Levi's Stadium, in Santa Clara, California.

"Myself and our producer, Ricky Kirshner, were both personal fans of Bruno and had seen him in concert and knew what he could do," Moll said to Billboard of Mars' first NFL halftime show stint. "It was a lot of just telling folks here and getting folks excited about Bruno and taking them to shows and letting them see what he could do. And that's kind of what got it going."

However, it's not just her personal musical preferences that helped Mars land the gig. Moll said, "I look at it really is Super Bowl XLVIII as a whole and the day really encompassed music from the beginning of the day all the way through halftime."

The "Uptown Funk" singer has had a string of successes even without the announcement of the release of his third and upcoming record. Mashable reports that Bruno Mars, along with collaborator Mark Ronson, won the Best Male Video Award at the MTV VMAs in August for their single, which appears on Ronson's album. The duo won against category nominees Ed Sheeran, Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, and Nick Jonas.

In an interview with That's Shanghai, Mars spoke of his frequent collaborators, Ronson and Jeff Bhasker, saying, "Mark and Jeff...are good buddies of mine, but also my favorite producers out there today. I’m constantly going back and forth with them, thinking about the next step and what we can do together."

Mars also talked about the creative process of his upcoming record. He said, "I want to write better songs, I want to put on better shows, I want to make better music videos. I want my next album to be better than the first and the second."

Additionally, he explained that "Inspiration hits me always unexpectedly: on a plane, when I’m out or just before I go to bed. An idea will suddenly come to my mind, and sometimes I manage to turn it into lyrics the next day. Sometimes it’ll take me one year to get something real out of it. You can’t force creativeness."

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