Mika Dance Elle!!

From the france magazine Elle, Mika and his 3 sisters

 

N° 3321 August, 21st 2009

Thanks to Mikafrance.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translation Thanks to Melman92

 

Never without his sisters !

1,2,3 Mika !

 

They take care of him and help him keep down to earth. As his next album will surely be a great success, Mika tells us about his sisters, his childhood, and his endless constant teenage happiness.

He enters an elegant suite of a Parisian Palace and propose us kindly to try on his cool stripped green and white sweater he bought at the Salvation Army in London. Then he asks us to help him tighten the hinden leg of his Paul Smith’s pants (????) That’s how he is, Mika. The taste of simple things (*cough*), almost childish talismans: a plastic multicoloured bracelet, a customised Mickey (I wrote Mikey at first ) as a pendant. And he’s not obsessed with his credit cart either, him who sold more than 5 million copies of -of which 1 million in France- his debut album Life in Cartoon Motion and rewarded by more than 10ish prices. “I spend a lot of money for my gigs, but in real life I’m afraid of money” he confides.” I never have a credit card with me, only cash, and I’m not at ease with spending too much money” With his ruffled brown hair, his beaming smile “full of teeth, his witty and mischievous look, we could almost catch sight of a big kid. Or an everlasting teenager aged 26.

 

Indeed, Michael Holbrook Penniman’s long-awaited new album,- Mika, to his friends (French expression)- celebrates his adolescence whereas the first opus gave away a dreamy and ‘technicoloured’ version of his childhood. “Because we never forget our adolescence, no matter how hard we try” The first single/videoclip, “We are Golden”, displays him singing alone at the top of his voice, or at least in an amazing teenage bedroom full with posters and gadgets -thumbs up to the decorator.(can we say heads up?) Mika’s one, we can imagine, less flamboyant than this one, and his adolescence less emblematic. “It was happy but I would stay in my own bedroom in my own world to escape “the things of life”. I was writing songs to create a new reality." Today,we could think that nothing,more or less has changed. “ Success,with its ups and downs, gave me an opportunity to live a second adolescence”And the singer stayed in his room,a small “music” studio actually,where he spent 8 “industrious” months to write and compose his songs.

“It was in Los Angeles, but my mother, who knows I need discipline, she advised me not to take a comfortable place...” He’s a family guy (meaning he’s into staying with his family, kinda), Mika! Around the pop star orbit 3 sisters, keepers of the family “spirit, sense”. To protect himself from the outer world? “Yes, and to keep a right vision of things” assures the one who doesn’t consider himself as the prodigy in the Penniman family. “Every day, there’s a another whiz kid in the family. One day, it’s me if I did an amazing gig. The next day, it’ll be my brother Fortuné: He’s eighteen, and he’s just passed a very hard exam to go to an Architecture school in London. Or my little sister Zuleika, brilliant student in stylism at ESMOD. It’s hard to be lousy or not to be nice in a family with five kids. As soon as one is bad tempered, all the others attack him. Actually, it’s not with the other pop singers I feel in competition with, it’s with my siblings!”

 

The eldest, Yasmine, an artist mad about fashion, drew his two album covers. Paloma, the stylist, took care of the brother’s wardrobe, while Zuleika made a few costumes for his tour. An “all-sister” collaboration, which goes back to the time where no record company would sign Mika. And it reminds them remember the happy times when they were all together living under the same roof as a family. “Mika knows exactly what he wants”affirms Paloma. “ When he doesn’t get what he wants, because we haven’t guessed what he had in mind, he shouts, rants and raves. (very whiny Mika indeed) We fight a lot” . Yasmine, smiling,doesn’t say otherwise. “He was a pain in the neck when he was a child. He would go into our rooms and pull our hair. Well, now he’s also really nice and very protective”

All this little world express itself fluently in French, due to a childhood in France but also in Chinese.

 

They all speak Chinese because of a trip they did in Pekin with their mother after what happened in Tian’ amen. (says Jasmine)

Mika also took Chinese lessons. This trip really influenced him. (I guess it tells a bit about the PDP decor- i.e. Chinese dragon)

What also influenced Mika was a troubled childhood (surprise, surprise) which began in 1983 in Beirut, then Cyprus, then Paris (where he discovers Chantal Goya and Dorothée- basically French stars for the children in the 80’s,the first one being a singer, the second a star on tv who presented shows displaying cartoons and she stopped because something happened with a child... she slapped him or something? Or that was a politician. Anyway, I digress) and then in London.

In Paris, everything was fine, his father, a banker, had a job, they were going to a private school, they had a nice apartment” (Mika says) Then his father had to stay at the American embassy in Kuwait for 7 months after a business trip there. If he went out of it, he’d have become a political prisoner. When he was eight,they’d watch CNN and prayed not to see him on TV because that would have been a bad sign for him.

He’d fax drawings to them (?? I think it’s the other way around but that what

they say in the interview). When he came back,his business went downhill and they had to move to London. The whole family lived in a B&B in London for a year and then moved into a house.

They had a less lot (?) money at the time but those were the best years of his life because his mother, who was designing a clothing line for children at the time, encouraged them to be very creative.

 

At 14, without everyone knowing, Mika went to record companies he saw on the street to give them his “piano-voice” demos. In class as soon as the recess began, he rushed to a small isolated room to compose songs. “I was telling myself that if I managed to write a catchy chorus, it’d be ten times more powerful than the insults they were telling me every day. At school, it was tough for me. I didn’t have the right looks, I was coming from nowhere, I had a high-pitched voice that everybody was laughing at because I began writing jingles for publicity at age 12. So,to feel better, I’d store up songs as ammunition.

 

Ammunition, which sound as canon-shots in the more or less gloomy sky of British pop. With a new album full of promising singles and sophisticated at the same time, influenced by Kurt Weil or by Disney tunes of the 40’s, and full of hysterical joy which often announces great pains. Mika is yet to be, once again, high in the charts. And it doesn’t matter if some point out the angelic and naïve side to his music, far away from the sexual magnetism of some big names of rock’n’roll!What’s incredible about my favourite artists like Bowie or Prince is the freedom they gave themselves to explore genres. Prince walked in high heels and swayed his hips as a stripper but still being terribly masculine. I’m not like that on stage of course but my lyrics and the way that I sing and in my lyrics,

I’m completely free to be who I want to be. My music is probably not open sexually-wise, but I express the blurring of genres. Besides, this big teenager has time to evolve. “In this business, were teenagers our whole life!” Except when we get closer to death. At that moment, we must feel like babies again”

 

Thanks to mireille geha

 

It's a very long article so I am only going to translate important stuff that Mika said:

I am not very comfortable with money. I spend a fortune on my shows but when it comes to my personal life I'm a bit scared of spending too much.I never carry a credit card always cash. This album is making me live my teenage years again. I used to lock myself in the bedroom for a very long time to write songs that would make me feel stronger than all the bullying I used to get

"So I spent 8 months in LA studios to compose the new songs. My mum who knows I need discipline, told me to stay in a place that is not very comfortable.I don't see myself as the genius of my family. Everyday we have a new genius: one day it's me for having a great concert, now it's my brother Fortune who's 18 and just succeeded in the very hard exam to enter an architecture school in London.

Zuleika is a brilliant design student at Esmod. If you're not "important" in my family, all the others (brother and sisters) will attack you. I am not in competition with other singers, I am in competition with my brother and sisters.Yasmine is the one who did the cover for both albums. Paloma takes care of my wardrobe and Zuleika designs some outfits and costumes for my shows. A family effort, exactly how it used to be when all the studios refused my music. Paloma said: he knows exactly what he wants. And if we don't get it straight away he tantrums (love the man). Then they talk a bit about his childhood (the story we all know) then about his new album. They point out that some crtics say your albums are too innocent and not as "sexual" as other singers. He says: I always admired Prince and Bowie for being free in exploring both sexes (Humm, don't like that). Prince used to wear high heals and walk like a model, while keeping his masculanity (sorry I don't know how to say it in English). Im not going to do that on stage (thank God for that) but in my songs you could see the confusion of sexes.

Thanks for posting these this size. Now I can actually read the text. That is, the parts I understand.

How can one family be so beautiful....so so so incredibly beautiful

Thanks for posting!

Fab pics!

I hate French:naughty:

 

Aaw, his sisters are so pretty! Paloma looks kinda different from what I've seen though:blink:

The only 2 I recognized when I saw the pic at first were Mika and Zuleika:naughty:

 

Anyways, can anyone translate this? When it comes to French, I'm a disaster:teehee:

How can one family be so beautiful....so so so incredibly beautiful

good genes

Why is Zuleika the only one with --what looks likes-- black hair?

And where is Fortuné?

Wow, they're all so beautiful

 

can anyone translate for us whose French is not exactly fluent?

 

Those are the most beautiful pictures of the siblings I've ever seen

They're all so beautiful!!! They've all got such charismas!

 

Can someone translate please?

This article is totally unexpected!

TFP

 

 

Why is Zuleika the only one with --what looks likes-- black hair?

And where is Fortuné?

 

Well, the article is about his sisters... Isn't Fortuné a boy?

WOOOOW! Thank you Lucrezia!!! Interestingly this magazine in each country has the different content? We have this magazine on sale, but I did not notice anything good.

Oh wow they are all so breathtakingly beautiful!!

Wish I understood what the article is all about.

 

Thanks for posting!!

nice pics god know what it all says

Zuleika looks super pretty in the 2nd picture.

 

Thanks for posting! Though i cant understand it (should have taken french instead of spanish! ), the pix are super cute!

I'm also appreciative of the pics, but have no idea what the words say:teehee:

 

The amount of french I know could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

Wow cute pictures :wub2:and his sisters are so beautiful

What month from Elle is it ?September or August ?

I hope someone will translate it

Than you so much for posting, the pictures are really sweet!

 

Can we look forward to a translation?

 

You know you can always use Goggle translator, just copy and...you know, I don't know the English words but you know what I mean:

 

http://translate.google.se/?hl=sv

 

It, doesn't give you the most beautiful language, but it's very useful if you don't have a much time on you're hands, and I believe it would at least manage French to English, two big languages!

Wow! Amazing! I didn't recognise Paloma in the first pic at first, definitely looks different. They're so photogenic

 

Is this the current issue of French Elle? Who's on the cover of it? Might buy it if it doesn't cost me a fortune

The pictures are BRILLIANT!!!! He looks ... as always...

 

Thanks for posting...

 

 

I want the magazine!

I want this magazine!

I want this magazine!

 

Me too!

Me too!

Me three

I'm also appreciative of the pics, but have no idea what the words say:teehee:

 

The amount of french I know could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

It's a very long article so I am only going to translate important stuff that Mika said:

I am not very comfortable with money. I spend a fortune on my shows but when it comes to my personal life I'm a bit scared of spending too much.I never carry a credit card always cash. This album is making me live my teenage years again. I used to lock myself in the bedroom for a very long time to write songs that would make me feel stronger than all the bullying I used to get(to be continued)

Me three

 

me 4

It's a very long article so I am only going to translate important stuff that Mika said:

I am not very comfortable with money. I spend a fortune on my shows but when it comes to my personal life I'm a bit scared of spending too much.I never carry a credit card always cash. This album is making me live my teenage years again. I used to lock myself in the bedroom for a very long time to write songs that would make me feel stronger than all the bullying I used to get(to be continued)

 

thank you

Oh my.. thanks a lot