It was serviced to contemporary hit radios in the United States on February 15, 2011, as the album's third single by Atlantic and Elektra.

Development of "The Lazy Song" began while Mars, Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine were hanging around the studio and didn't feel like working.

The trio produced the track under their alias, the Smeezingtons, and wrote the song in collaboration with rapper K'naan.

"The Lazy Song" reached number four on the US Billboard Hot 100, while it topped the charts in Denmark and in the United Kingdom.

[3] "The Lazy Song" was written by Mars, Philip Lawrence, Levine and K'naan, while production was handled by the former three production-team, the Smeezingtons.

[11] Lewis Corner, reviewer of Digital Spy wrote that "Bruno pulls a sickie in this reggae-pop number about, well, absolutely nothing."

[12][13] Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine noted the lyrics "paints a portrait of Al Bundy as a young man".

[16][17][18] "The Lazy Song" was the third single to be released from Mars's debut studio album Doo-Wops & Hooligans (2010).

Atlantic and Elektra Records released the song, initially for airplay on contemporary hit radio in the United States, on February 15, 2011.

[21] Sean Fennessey, a reviewer of The Washington Post, felt the song was written in a "quality that is both endearing and damning".

[6] and from Blues & Soul magazine who called it "reggae tinged" and found it to be "somewhat of a filler but for the likes of Peter Andre" is great.

[22] Andy Gill of The Independent classified the song as a "laidback acoustic groove", that displays "a flimsy reggae-lite gloss".

[23] Entertainment Weekly's Leah Greenblatt considered that "other modes suit him less well; The Lazy Song is perhaps better left to Jason Mraz".

[31] "The Lazy Song" spent a total of 27 weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at number four.

[43][44] The song has sold 747,000 copies in the United Kingdom as of October 2016 and was certified two times platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

[53] Mars was able to watch the video his label had produced for the song prior to the release of Doo-Wops & Hooligans.

[57] The video opens with Mars sporting black sunglasses and a flannel shirt, singing and hanging out in a bedroom with five similarly-dressed dancers wearing chimpanzee masks.

While Mars sings about what he feels like doing on a day off, he and the dancers perform boy-band-reminiscent dance moves and fool around in mimicry of the song's lyrics.

Fellow Smeezingtons member Philip Lawrence makes a cameo appearance, lip-syncing the line "Oh my God, this is great!

The video ends with him pouring yellow confetti over the dancers then striking a pose together with them, and the returned Lawrence, for the camera.

[62] It features Leonard Nimoy wearing a bathrobe and slippers all day, "enjoy[ing] the lazy life".

[79] In 2020, American singer-songwriter Bennett covered "The Lazy Song" as part of the tenth anniversary of Mars's debut album.