Videos: Mika about the songs from the album The Origin Of Love track by track

STEP WITH ME

The song ‘’Step With Me’’ was written in a castle in France, by a far place, with Hillary Lindsey, the national writer who wrote ‘’Jesus Takes the Wheel’’, which is an amazing pop song and also with a young writer and program producer for Billboard, and we were all there actually for a song writing camp and we were just hanging out in castles like…people who hang out in castles, playing a lot….

We were there because Miles Copeland, the former manager of The Police, hold this song writing camp , where everyday you were put with people you’ve never worked with before, you were put in different rooms of the castle, you write a song and, you record it and by the evening, you had all to sit in a ground hall with like fifty of you, the youngest, coolest, best writers in the world, and they’re put together at that time, and you play your demos in front of everybody, the song you wrote that day, and there’s no excuses, you have to play something, even if it sucks, and it’s funny because sometimes people go…and they come back with these big songs and they’re put in different rooms... We’ve got put in this little college …chasing everywhere…and the… for it, and we were trying to keep this… and we were freezing and Hillary Lindsey had a terrific hangover from about, three boxes, no, cause I… one of the bottles, there were one on the box and cheap wine, so the song that we wrote was confident, sweet and short, because we didn’t have too much time on it, and so, ‘’Step With Me’’ is the result of those limitations. It’s kinda like, it’s got this stroking, summery, …, it’s a daydream, that’s what the song is, it’s a daydream, the chorus goes ‘’this love is delicious like home-cooked dishes that I’m tasting mischiveouly’’, and then we’re getting into instructions… step one…step two… step three, I’m calling you baby, three steps away from loving me, step four…step five… three steps, three steps…and we’re back in.

On the record, Hillary Lindsey is doing the backing vocals, on Popular, Priscila Renea is singing with me, on different songs there’s different people, singing with me, and there are not really ‘’featurings’’, sometimes there are, but not always, it’s just that it’s what happened because I wrote a lot of this record as I recorded it, it’s just what happened, and so I thought it was normal to let the people who wrote the record with me, who are my friends and who I had fun with be on the record as well.

POPULAR

Popular is a song made of the chorus from a song by the same name called ‘’Popular’’ from the musical ‘’Wicked’’ which is written by Stephen Schwartz. I first met Stephen Schwartz about three years ago and he came to the studio and listened to my second album and we just started talking. And although we never actually have written together, I sent him a e-mail one day saying ‘’You know I really like your song Popular , and, would you mind if I played a little bit of it?... to me is something else. I have a lot of respect to you and I won’t kind of like make fun of it, but just let me go with it’’, he laughed me to and the result is really, this bizarre exchange between me and my collaborator and co-writer, Priscilla Renea and we did it on the States. We’re talking about these kids in the school.

This is the only song that really kinda pops to my childhood. It sounds like a soundtrack to an animation like The Simpsons or something and it’s very… that way, and Priscilla sounds like such a restrain sense of…humour and everything that she does, but she’s got a voice which sounds like young Michael Jackson. I love the… pom-pom-pom, pom-pom. And then the…. Second…shot awaiting, and then, we’re about ready to go…now!

When you make influences like Beck and the musical Annie together it can’t go wrong, or you can only go wrong, I don’t know, same difference.

KIDS

The song ‘’Kids’’ is probably the most Californian of all of my songs, There’s a Californian ray of sunshine across this record, it kind of Beck,… I don’t know,… Beck and Laurel Canyon inspired way. In ‘’Kids’’ you hear that and it’s like ‘’look at us having this argument on this side of the road, on this side of the road, there’s you and me, and we’re fighting, on the other side of the road there’s a bunch of kids playing on the… sun in a Californian side street in the middle, in the middle of the city, look at us and look at them, and look what we’ve become and look where we came from, and is there a way we can fix this?’’ and there it goes, and there’s also a little bit of ressentiment torturing the kids on the other side of the street, cause I go ‘’Kids, what they know about life? Nothing at all! They think they know everything, but they don’t know nothing at all!’’, and I say I’m angry at them and I’m spit at them simply because I’m jealous, because I look around this awful life and I’m like, you know, ‘’this is us, look what we were’’. The reality is that being a kid is pretty horrible most of the time, but that’s kind of where ‘Kids’ started from.

I worked on it with Nick Littlemore, I wrote it with him, and, originally the song as a chorus was supposed to be for ‘’Looking Him’’ for the Empire Of The Sun record and I never actually played to ‘’Look’’ at the end, because we have worked on another song for the record called ‘’Good Times’’ so in the end was like ‘’ you know, I’m keeping this one for myself, it makes me happy, so, is a nice relief on the record’’.

Has someone recorded "Overrated" and "Make you happy"?

Here, but it's only the sound

Let's see if this works...

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?oekq93krcwtqhhb

http://www.mediafire.com/?h5zb3eaem7fb0md

I will keep on waiting for LWID's track by track

*hopeless but well ... *

Hope springs eternal

[YOUTUBE]RKOMoeBsQjQ[/YOUTUBE]

Overrated!

Thank you very much for the transcriptions Bia!

I will keep on waiting for LWID's track by track

*hopeless but well ... *

Hope springs eternal

+1

[YOUTUBE]RKOMoeBsQjQ[/YOUTUBE]

just me who was waiting for a more than 2 minutes video for this one???

Thank you very much for the transcriptions Bia!

you're welcome (they're not complete btw, any native english speaker to help me???)

 

just me who was waiting for a more than 2 minutes video for this one???

 

ME!! I was about to write that... I expected a bigger, deeper story for Overrated, it seems more important than what he actually showed us.

Sorry, still not very fond of Overrated.

Indeed, maybe if Mika explained more about where the song actually came from, it would get more meaning for me.

Sorry, still not very fond of Overrated.

 

 

Indeed, maybe if Mika explained more about where the song actually came from, it would get more meaning for me.

With those lyrics.. I don't think he'd want to go into it in too much detail...

With those lyrics.. I don't think he'd want to go into it in too much detail...

Yes I agree.

Bia I'll have a look at the transcripts later. Haven't had a chance to see all the videos yet.

ME!! I was about to write that... I expected a bigger, deeper story for Overrated, it seems more important than what he actually showed us.

There is definitely a big, deep story behind it, it's just that he doesn't consider it important to share details. I don't think it is needed, actually.

Yes I agree.

 

Bia I'll have a look at the transcripts later. Haven't had a chance to see all the videos yet.

take your time

could you do it for the Celebrate's transcription as well??? (there are parts missing on the last paragraph, my ears aren't good enough to hear Mika speaking sometimes )

There is definitely a big, deep story behind it, it's just that he doesn't consider it important to share details. I don't think it is needed, actually.

I agree. Obviously someone hurt him terribly and I really don't need the details of that.

Alternatively, he might have simply written down what his boyfriend said to him after hearing LYWID

Alternatively, he might have simply written down what his boyfriend said to him after hearing LYWID

"I emotionally killed a man" comes to mind.

"I emotionally killed a man" comes to mind.

That quote again! It's going to haunt him forever

I don't think it is needed, actually.

I agree. I haven't seen the video but he's already said it was about wanting his lover to kill him and thinking he's useless to him if he can't even do that. Pretty much says it all.

Sorry, still not very fond of Overrated.

 

 

Indeed, maybe if Mika explained more about where the song actually came from, it would get more meaning for me.

To me, it's simply the agony you get after your love story when wrong and you just want to die because you can't have your loved one... The track is quite strong and show the anger/sadness towards the other person.

Have you never wanted to die for a failed love story?

Wow, it sounds massive without some tracks from the result! So unusual!

And I must admit, that when I stopped comparing it with demo, I started to love this song unconditionally

Wow, it sounds massive without some tracks from the result! So unusual!

And I must admit, that when I stopped comparing it with demo, I started to love this song unconditionally

I actually love it far more than the demo. On the demo it's on a par with Your Sympathy and Erase. It's a very nice song, but doesn't have the thrill factor.

The new version is dramatic and grabs you straight away. I love everything about it.

I actually love it far more than the demo. On the demo it's on a par with Your Sympathy and Erase. It's a very nice song, but doesn't have the thrill factor.

The new version is dramatic and grabs you straight away. I love everything about it.

Yes! Though in the beginning I expected that he will do something like I See You from this demo. He didn't, and I was disappointed.

But now I totally changed my mind. It is just a song with the same title as demo, that's all. It is awesome by itself, without comparison to any other things :wub2: