Mika's back with more perfectly crafted pop
Lebanese-British singer-songwriter who performs in Hong Kong next week has a new album out that shows a new maturity and which, he says, is the product of a liberated mood
There is no shame in listening to Mika's perfectly crafted tunes. Unlike scores of exiled pop princes and princesses before him, Mika has enjoyed indefatigable popularity: his records aren't relegated to dust-ridden cupboards, he lives less in the shadows of his previous hits and more in the light of his next upbeat single, and his name isn't mentioned as a nod to the past.
Mika, born Michael Holbrook Penniman Jnr in Beirut to a Lebanese mother and an American father, is a purveyor of pure pop. This means he takes its basic verse-chorus-verse form very seriously. Yet none of the songs on his four released albums sound the same.
His 2007 breakout single, , capitalised on his impressive three-octave range — he trained as an opera singer — while also speaking about identity crises and circumventing stuffy music conventions.
Allegedly, Mika wrote the song after being asked by an industry schmuck to mimic the style and sound of another singer, which resulted in the nice self-deprecating lyric: "I tried to be like Grace Kelly/ But all her looks were too sad/ So I try a little Freddie/ I've gone identity mad". On one hand, it's just a pop song — and a very popular one, hitting No 1 on the UK charts — but on the other, it subtly reveals Mika's penchant for the extraordinary. Its chorus is a riff off an aria in Rossini's and it features dialogue from the 1954 film (for which Grace Kelly won an Oscar).
was followed by (about a man exploring a homosexual affair), and — a positive ditty about the female form — all from his first studio album, . His second and third albums were creeping hits. The singer — known for emulating Freddie Mercury both stylistically in clinging skinny costumes and in vocals — was overwhelmed with tour bookings. However, at this point in 2013, he began to face creative difficulties.
