Here’s Why Bruno Mars & Anderson .Paak Pushed Back Silk Sonic Album Release

After announcing the project, with special guest host Bootsy Collins, in late February, their lead single and Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Leave the Door Open” was released March 5. The single and its highly anticipated follow-up “Skate,” which rolled onto the top 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, are the only two singles that have been released ahead of the full-length project.

In order to re-create the ’60s/’70s Philly soul and funk sound for the album, Silk Sonic studied up on old-school material, like drumming magazines, and recorded in a period-appropriate fashion with only a couple of mics in a room full of musicians, much like the atmosphere captured in the “Leave the Door Open” music video. But considering Mars’ meticulous recording (and re-recording and re-re-recording) process, he said they put “pressure” on themselves to release that first single — and even claimed at one point that working on the bridge of “Leave the Door Open” “almost broke the band up.”

“But a deadline is important, because at some point, you gotta say, ‘This is it.’ Otherwise you’re gonna work it till you hate it,” the “Uptown Funk” hitmaker noted. “But there’s a beauty in that — you do have to get sick of it, because that means you put the love and the time and the passion in it, and it’s taxing.”