"The Lazy Song" was written for Bruno Mars by The Smeezingtons, who operate a recording studio in Hollywood, CA. One of the writers, Ari Levine, explained, "[It] was a very tough song to write, even though it is so simple. That song began one day when we were hanging around the studio and hadn’t written a song for a few days and we were kind of burnt out and didn’t feel like working. We felt lazy...(and) suddenly came up with this idea."

Getting that reggae-ish feel to the drum part is no easy chore when you're working with digital notation. What we did here is the best we can do for the time being... And the banjo sound seemed appropriate for the laid back feel of the song.