Australia, is Bruno Mars the New P!nk?

What is it with us Australians? Huh? Are we so starved for attention all the way down here on Earth's underside that we'll latch onto anything and anyone willing to pay us a minute amount of it? Is any artist that is famous enough to know but not necessarily time-poor enough to be locked into an Asia tour leg destined to be an "honorary Australian" for all of time to come? As far as I can tell, the answer is yes.

Take for example, our bizarre fascination with P!nk. An artist who is—forgive me—average. An artist whose music shouldn't resonate with this country any more than any other. An artist whose ability to live in a Malibu mansion of this calibre could quite safely be attributed to suburban Australian mums and aunts alone.

According to me, Australia's obsession with P!nk is made up of two defining parts: The first is that she is so unbelievably relatable to us because she is the absolute spitting image of a woman you've stood behind in line for Brumby's at your local shopping centre your entire fucking life: kids hanging off her while she orders in her husky, pack-a-day dulcet tones, leopard print off-the-shoulder tank top revealing a 15-year-old's idea of a good tattoo and an eyebrow ring glistening out from underneath her platinum blonde, comically-long side quiff.

The second is that she tours here a lot. The more she comes, the more we love her. The more we respect and revere her. Because there's nothing Australians like more than being acknowledged. We're so far away, you know? We just want you guys to notice us.

While we might have known that P!nk was most loved down under than anywhere else in the world, that didn't necessarily mean that anyone in their right fucking mind believed she could sell out 18 shows at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena—a stadium with a capacity of 15,000—on one tour. Or that those 18 nights made up just a fraction of a tour leg in our fair and fortunate country, that consisted of a genuinely baffling 46 shows. Or that we'd love her so much she'd choose to film her live on tour DVD here, in the arse-end of the world.

But despite all logic and reason, we did. It happened.

Will anyone ever match up? Will anyone have what it takes (trapeze and animal print, I assume) to knock P!nk off the throne? More importantly: Should anyone really be allowed to play more than 18 stadium shows in a row in one city? Or is that basically a kind of softcore dictatorship?

Either way, if it is not entirely impossible, the man to do it may be one Bruno Mars. A man whose most recent album 24 Karat Magic is a big fat testament to his ability to write crowd-pleasing, genre-spanning, ear-worming pop and R&B which is nothing if not a recipe for Top 40 success in this moment in time. A man who has just added his fifth Sydney show to his Australian dates—which already see him playing fourteen fucking times. Yes, "24 Karat Magic" is probably the most beautiful, uplifting, infectious pop single of the year. And yes, the video for "That's What I Like" is positively hypnotic. But does that really warrant 2.4% of Sydney's population paying to see him in concert???

I don't know. Probably. At least he doesn't have a song that includes the lyrics: Dear Mr. President / Were you a lonely boy?

Check out Bruno's many, many tour dates below and buy tickets here.

Melbourne, Rod Laver Arena
Wednesday March 7
Thursday March 8
Saturday March 10
Sunday March 11

Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Wednesday March 14
Thursday March 15

Sydney, Qudos Bank Arena
Saturday March 17
Sunday March 18
Tuesday March 20
Friday March 23
Saturday March 24

Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Monday March 26

Perth Arena
Wednesday March 28
Thursday March 29