Aloud.com: Mika - King of Pop 2007 (Part 2)

Part 2.

The drawings that go with the songs are immensely cute. Is that you?

I do all the drawings with my sister who does drawings under the name Da Wack, which is so unlike her as she's dainty.

They're like little caricatures of the songs, Lollipop Girl, Mrs Brown...

And this is just the beginning, they're gonna be everywhere!

There's going to be a little family of cartoons?

Oh yeah, they live in the Emerald Forest. There's a very special little podcast we're working on because I really like The Archers, it's such a cool little oddity, a gem of this country. I was thinking "If we did the Archers, but in the Emerald Forest, instead of where the Archers is set. What if Billy Brown is one of the characters, and Lollipop Girl is one of the characters, and I'm in it, let's do a audio-Holloaks with psychedelic characters".

What was your favourite Archers storyline? It's gone a bit downhill since Brian and Siobhan.

I like all of them, I like the mundane-ness of it, it’s really great. It's warmer than watching something like Hollyoaks or Emmerdale, and you can tell it's fake, but something about the Archers, it’s got an antiquated feel to it, and the sound effects are brilliant (makes motorcycle noise)

What's your favourite cartoon?

I just saw Belleville Rendez-vous again, I think that's fantastic. But as far as a series cartoon, The Simpsons is great, I always refer to it because I have this fascination with the way that a cartoon like The Simpsons, or any cartoon going back to Warner Brothers cartoon and stuff, where they're so loosely attached to reality, so by the end of a thirty minute episode Homer can become president of the United States but by the next episode he's right back where he started, you know what I mean? Anything's possible, but it’s always pinned slightly in reality so it’s funny and relevant but anything is possible.

So, life in cartoon motion?

Exactly. I love how Homer Simpson can sit there... I just saw the episode where George Bush Sr moves in opposite it in, and it causes a riot, and then he’s beating him up and punching him in a sewer, so he can make political statements, talk about Michael Jackson... if you're a kid you get a certain level of it, if you're an adult you get a deeper level of the joke, it's not just an old man moving next door, it’s George Bush Sr and you relate to it on a different wave, and I wanted to write songs that had a similar effect. So if you listen to a song like Love Today, there's coded little stories in it. One of them's about a hooker, because when I was writing I was working in Miami demoing with a bunch of musicians who were helping me for free and I co-wrote with a woman called Jodie Mark who helped get me some attention, and we'd be borrowing studio time, we'd come back from the studio at 3 in the morning and meet at the corner of 95 which is this highway there.

Don't ask me why Miami, it just had to be Miami, and it was during holiday time when I was at the Royal College of Music and I got a student loan out, stayed with friends, it was ridiculous. It took us a year to do four songs, but that's the only reason why I got my deal. And there'd always be hookers and drug dealers because it was kinda rough, and there was always one that never got picked up. So she's in the song, it goes "Carolina sits on 95/ Give her a dollar and she'll make you smile/ Hook her, book her, nook her then walk away, but everybody's gonna love today, gonna love today". And if you're a kid and you hear that song, you don't hear tha!. "Girl dresses like a kid for fun, she licks her lips like there's something other/ She tries to tell you life has just begun/ So now you know she's getting something other than the love from her mother". You' don’t get that if you're a kid, but if you're an adult you get it. It's like a cartoon - you take what you want out of it and leave what you don't.

Crikey. Like Grease, we never realised how dirty the lyrics are.

They're disgusting! It's all about writing lyrics that get around all the (sex thing) like "#### her senseless": you don't wanna say that, so say "Hook her book her nook her".

You've lived all over the place, so if we end up in Beirut, Paris, and London for a couple of hours each, where do we go?

Beirut, you've gotta go to Balbech and if you can, go see a concert. The last concert I saw there was Sting at the old Phoenician ruins. It's actually a Roman temple I think, and you sit outside on benches in the ruins and it's completely amazing and intimate. Sad, because a lot of it's been destroyed quite frankly so Beirut great, but you've got to look hard to find. Go up to where my family is from in the South, the old hippodrome, there are just ruins everywhere. A lot of them have been stolen and destroyed, especially now, but you go into people's houses and there’s so many bloody ruins everything that they've just built on top of them down in the basement, there's a horse head or something popping out of the ground. That's Beirut.

Paris? Just get loads of money and eat loads of food and buy crap that you don't need and stay in a beautiful hotel. That's the glamour of Paris. To tell you the truth, to get into the nitty gritty of Paris is just so hard, you have to really know your way around, you need to know people, it's a hard society to tap into. London? We all know London don't we?

One thing...

There used to be these incredible parties organized by a society called Reclaim The Beach, and they'd throw a party every couple of months on the bank of the river Thames when it was at low tide. They'd throw bonfires and DJs and food on stands... it was amazing. You'd be on a silt beach on the Thames with the most incredible view, it would be out of a Richard Curtis movie. I don't know if they're still doing them. Let’s get them back.

The last thing... Aloud was supposed to interview you weeks ago, but you kept getting stolen the fashion magazines. How fashionable would you rate yourself on a scale of Tesco to Manolo Blahnik?

(laughs) I don't know, depends who’s giving me clothes for free. I always say the most fashionable people are people who aren't tied to labels. If you do a thing with a label then there's a certain point to it, but you never really want to be identified by it. I don't want to look at you and say you're wearing THAT and THAT and THAT. To be a season whore is pointlessly unfashionable and you might as well be eclectic and keep people guessing.

This is quite a long interview (hence Parts 1 & 2) but in my opinion, it's one of the best articles I've read so far

Agreed. That was a great interview. Really enjoyed reading it too.

Thank you.

CW.

thanks for posting. interesting interview.

cool. haha. grease.

I didn't realize it was possible to love him more than I did already, but then he started talking about The Archers! Never listened to it myself, but I am a big supporter of soaps, including radio soaps, so yay for him. I'm loooking forward to this podcast he mentioned.

He likes Belleville Rendez-Vous? That's one of my favourite films ever!

I could actually see Mika doing a good cover of of the theme - it's quite Mika-ish! Might have to suggest it to him if I make it to one of the signings.

He likes Belleville Rendez-Vous? That's one of my favourite films ever!

 

I could actually see Mika doing a good cover of of the theme - it's quite Mika-ish! Might have to suggest it to him if I make it to one of the signings.

One of my favourites too and yes very Mika-ish, I can see why he likes it