Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Bruno Mars · S1 E1
Waikiki
Born October 8, 1985 in Honolulu. Peter Gene Hernandez enters a family where everyone sings, plays, and performs
A percussion loop rattles through a small apartment in Waikiki as a newborn cries for the first time. It is October 8, 1985, and Peter Gene Hernandez has just arrived into a household where the music never stops.
Bruno Mars, Talking to the Moon (Official Music Video, 2011). A kid on a small island, staring at the sky, convinced the whole world is out there waiting for him. Before the Grammys, before the Super Bowl, before any of it, there was a boy in Waikiki who wouldn't stop singing.
Born Into the Show
The Hernandez family runs on music. Peter's father, also named Peter, is a percussionist and doo-wop singer from Brooklyn with Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish roots. His mother, Bernadette San Pedro Bayot, is a Filipina immigrant and trained hula dancer who performs six nights a week on Waikiki's tourist strip.
“Everybody in my family sings, everyone plays instruments. I've just been surrounded by it.”
— Bruno Mars
Waikiki, Honolulu
The tourist strip where the Hernandez family performed every night. Bruno grew up surrounded by hotel lobbies, beach bars, and the sound of live music pouring out of every venue on the block.
TAP TO REVEAL: Where did the name 'Bruno' come from?
Where does the nickname 'Bruno' come from?
Talking to the Moon, Bruno Mars (2011)
Track seven on Doo-Wops & Hooligans starts as a bare piano whisper and builds into an arena-sized ballad about loneliness and distance. Listen for the way the production shifts: it opens sparse, then the drums crash in like a wave hitting shore. The song never charted as a US single on release, but went viral on TikTok over a decade later, eventually climbing the Billboard Hot 100 in 2021.
Count on Me, Bruno Mars
From Doo-Wops & Hooligans (2010). Built around a ukulele, the instrument of Bruno's Hawaiian childhood. The song is about unconditional loyalty, the kind of bond the Hernandez family ran on. After hearing about the household Peter Gene Hernandez was born into, this is the sound of what that family gave him.
Every night at the Ilikai Hotel, a doo-wop group called The Love Notes takes the stage with Peter Hernandez Sr. on percussion. Next: the family show, the tourist crowds, and a toddler who refuses to leave the stage.
0 XP earned this session