camille*

A friend of mine has spare tickets for Berlin April 2nd and London April 9th, both standing. Please let me know if interested

Unfortunately I can't make it to Berlin but would like to contribute to the gift. I will PayPal you Karin. Thanks !

Here's mine

All sold

I think the 'me' in the subtitles has to be separated from the previous sentence : 'Free, I don't know how to be. Me, I'm not ok in my blue jeans' (as you said, it's possible in familiar French) It might not be grammatically correct but it's a literal translation of the French lyrics. BTW, I'm glad they translated 'tall' and 'small' for the first verse because this how I immediately understood it from the beginning

I have an extra ticket for Barcelona 'Les Nits de Barcelona' festival on July 17. Seated ticket, section Front, row 3, seat 8. Please PM me if interested

Berlin and Lyon sold So I still have a ticket for Wolverhampton and I also have a friend selling a standing ticket for Bordeaux.

'Ringard' does mean outdated or has-been.. I'm sorry to break it to you but he does have this image from a part of the French audience. Because most of them still only know him from his 2007 hits, or more recently but still quite old now, Elle Me Dit. It's generally a description of him you would hear from people who have no clue what he is doing these days (apart from The Voice).. People who don't follow the music industry but Mika's success has been so huge in the past that they only remember that. I actually like what the journalist says, especially since probably her readers would think that way. 'You might think that about him but that's wrong'. Reestablishing the truth I also don't feel the same as you about his 'eccentricity', I really don't see it as negative but showing he is not ordinary but in a good way. I guess the 30000 tickets were actually supposed to be 3000 ? Or 30000 for the whole UK tour ? I don't know who got it wrong And about politics, for the context Libération is a left wing newspaper. An important Left political leader has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organisation so I would imagine the journalist wanted to emphasize that, although obviously she knows Mika is not a political analyst

Hello ! I have 2 standing tickets for Berlin to sell, as well as a seated ticket for Lyon (Cat 1) I've also put a standing ticket for Wolverhampton on sale on Ticketmaster.co.uk Please PM me if interested

Great summary @mellody , just a few more details : he says he is going to work again soon with Nick Littlemore for his English album, and that other guest Pierre III says he's actually booked to work in the studio with both Nick and Mika, which Mika has just learnt about. So he says Nick is quite unpredictable and mad in a good way About Harry Nilsson, Mika isn't the one annoyed by the fact that ppl only know 'Without You' but Harry was, because it was his biggest hit but it was another band's song. But I guess that annoys Mika too And about the round stage, I have to listen again because I kind of had the idea that this would be a B stage like he has mentioned before, but I prefer your vision very much Oh and by the looks of the photo, this interview was probably recorded on December 11

Hi Eriko, it's not a French song, it's a literal translation of Relax, Take It Easy in French that Mika sang as part of a game for a listener

Just popping in on the forum and I see your question, here are the notes we took at the listening party when Mika mentioned the cover : Doucement About the idea of flying over your problems. That's where the cover is from. On the cover he's not dead like some ppl seem to think nor some Italian reference he said (Padre something) but it's about the idea of daydreaming. Always be a daydreamer even when growing up.

I hear 'Pas ma place' at the beginning Amazing song

That's right I would translate 'too tall', I kind of understood that this song was about his complexes so that would fit.. but of course we need more context.. Friday !!

Oh thank you so much for letting us know I was already delighted that he reposted the story but these words mean a lot. Thanks again MFC for organizing this beautiful gift

I think you've covered it all Karin You understood right about the isolation part, I think he means that he thought the French project would exclude an international audience, but as shows abroad are sold out, he realizes it's not the case. As for Duolingo, yes there is a ranking and I find it funny that Mika seems to give so much importance to it, I barely check it myself We can sense his competitive spirit there. On the contrary, I totally relate to his obsession with dinner and planning everything around it

For me he definitely wanted to use both. I think it's clever this way BTW Carla de Coignac who wrote the song with Mika posted 2 interesting stories today, related to the lyrics. She mentions Calypso the nymph but also gives details about Calypso dance

I hear embrase first, then embrasse twice

From what I understood, the closing ceremony starts at 8.40pm

I wrote the (long ) translation of last week's Tendance Ouest interview: -Hello Mika -Hello, I'm pleased to be here -I am also very happy to be here. How is it going these days ? -I'm very good. Strangely, I always say that the creative process is like a spinning wheel and right now the wheel really is spinning, it's going 'tch tch tch'... The advantage is that ideas are easy. It means that if I have an idea, it's going to develop in an interesting way and quickly. It's not slow. The only drawback is that from time to time, at 9pm I'm a little tired. -So last night at 9, you were asleep. -Nearly. Nearly. No last night I had dinner in Caen. -And? -It was delicious. -Where did you go to eat ? -I treated myself. I really treated myself, it was me and my French manager, we ate at a very good restaurant whose chef is called Ivan, and it was very good. -Good that you ate well in Caen in Normandy. -And once again this morning I treated myself, I didn't eat like last night, but I saw that he had pepper, he sells pepper, I was amazed, he has 19 different sorts of pepper, so I bought them all, from all over the world. Because pepper is actually so precious. We have lost awareness that pepper is a rare spice, when it's real pepper. So I bought 19 of them, and I've arrived here with 19 sorts of pepper. -So you'll be able to test them at home -Potentially -How come 'potentially', because you'll have to taste all this pepper... -This tradition has started with my father, who is a very excentric man, almost strange, and he travels with his own pepper. -He does too ? -I promise you. When he's at a restaurant, he takes out his small bag secretely, he has a small tupperware or something in foil, he opens it, he has 3 or 4 of them in his pocket, and he adds pepper on his meals. -So he knows what pepper to marry with what ingredient, he has become a pepper expert -Except he doesn't want waiters to see him, or they will feel insulted that this man is bringing foil bags -He has never been caught ? -He has already been completely told off, especially in Paris. -Here in Caen we are not going to tell you off. -Thank you very much, I'm delighted. -So you are here to talk about your new album -Yes, not about pepper actually! I'm not here to sell pepper, I'm here to sell you I don't know what but not pepper. -We are impatient to listen to your album, you have unveiled the tracklist 2 days ago, this album is to be sincere and real, not that the previous ones were not, but it's another page of your life opening up with 'Que ta tête fleurisse toujours' -Exactly, in a way it's a restart. To find a way to be sincere, to be in the emotion and also very intimate in what I tell and at the same time without being melancholic, without being sentimental. Doing it with melodies that stay in mind, with this pop anglo saxon attitude, all this pop I adore and I grew up with, Pet Shop Boys, Bee Gees, Elton John, and doing it in French. That was my challenge. -An album 100% in French which is not your native language, it was a risk, why did you want an album only in French ? -You know I've lived some painful stuff these last years, there's also a link with France that took shape, that strenghtened these last years because I was not doing any TV shows, I was less exposed, and it allowed me to form another link -What strenghtened that link ? -My mother was ill. And specialists who had to follow her, the best in Europe, were in Paris, at La Salpêtrière. It starts with something sad, and life is often like that. And often in music. And so I was often visiting, and around this, she told me at the start of her illness 'If I fall ill and all my children stop being creative, furiously creative, I would be disappointed, I would be disappointed with you' You say 'Thank you Mum...'As a consequence the first thing I did was to force her to sing -It annoyed your family a little bit, didn't it ? -They didn't understand because it was hard. It was just one sentence, two sentences, and as she had brain problems, she had had several brain surgeries, it took 4 hours and a half to record one sentence. She didn't want to leave the studio and everyone was furious. They thought I was doing something unfair, but I could see in her eyes that she wanted to do it. And it was like a wheel starting to spin like we said at the beginning, the wheel has to spin. And when it starts spinning and it's for real, everything is possible and we feel free. To explain 'Que ta tête fleurisse toujours', it means if you can have ideas, it means you are giving yourself the possibility that the small idea has value. -Flowers have a link with the visual you have unveiled, they are mentioned in the song 'C'est La Vie', it's the first one we know from this album, tomorrow another one will be released, where did this idea of flowers come from ? -It's from a message from my mother. Everything comes from there but the album does not talk about her, and the album is not sad, I promise. Because if the album is as intensely sad as what I'm telling, I'd better take out some pepper. It starts from there, from that provocation 'May your head always bloom'. But it's not flowers in the sense like flowers we see on our curtains, it's the idea of a flower, the idea of something that grows, something small that becomes magnificent and colourful, and then that disappears, and then the cycle starts again -The circle of life -That's it -The album does not talk about your mum, but this song C'est La Vie evokes her -It's the last song I wrote for the album, I had finished everything and then I was in the studio and I wrote this song and I thought 'here is a good front door for this kaleidoscopic album' -Your mum, very important for you and who followed you all along your artistic life, was she also a friend ? -Oh yes, for sure we had fun. When we were working (we had been working for a very long time together), a lot of people would not realise that she was my mother because from one moment to the other, we would be laughing like crazy and the next arguing --You talk about intimate things on this album, maybe things you have never talked about before, like your boyfriend Andy, the song 'Andy, Paris et moi' has been mentioned several times, song that annoys your partner. -'Partner' yes, much better than 'boyfriend' -Yes because you have been together a long time -Also because.. not that little/small you know (boyfriend in French literally translates as little friend) -He's a tall as you. There's also the song 'Jane Birkin', we have not heard it yet but can't wait to hear it, you have worked with Valérie Lemercier on this song ? -Actually, what happened is that I wrote this song 10 months ago, almost a year ago -She had not left us yet Exactly. And it's an homage to Jane Birkin in the sense that if my song 'Grace Kelly' was a reference for my family as she was my grandmother's icon, if I had to think of an icon of my childhood, my teenage years in France, I think of Jane Birkin, because it also represents this relationship English/French, as poetic and elegant as she was punk and dangerous. What was incredible with this woman, is that she was also an actress, she was doing pop, symphonic, art, philosophy, and she always kept that very mysterious side. And I think if today you have to find how to get inspired, how to behave... because you need to always be a fan. Always. Even at 40, at 50, you have to still be a fan and you need to have people in your mind about whom you're thinking 'one day when I'm old, I want to be like him or her' Now I'm 40 and I still think 'one day when I'm old I want to be like him or her' -Right now who are you thinking of apart from Jane ? -One day when I'm old, I'd like to have Moustaki's poetic sense, I'd like to have the irreverence with a mind-blowing musicality of Prince, I'd like... All of this are dreams, but why not ? We need to have dreams. I'd like... I'd like to be happy and resistant. -Are you not happy ? -Yes I am, but it's not guaranteed that I'll be later. -To be back on track about this song, what about Valérie Lemercier ? -Ah yes Valérie, I had seen her the week before, I don't know why I had seen her, I had seen her somewhere... I think we had something to eat. Oh yes she loves to eat. -You saw her because you are friends. -Yes sometimes she draws a portrait of me and she sends it to me on the phone. I have one from yesterday. -I'd like to see. -I can show you. What is interesting is that on it I look on the left, she had asked me a question and she didn't know whether I was going to say yes or no, I'm not going to tell you what she asked me, but she drew a look that hasn't decided yet if it's going to say yes or no, it's incredible. This woman is incredible, I can confirm it. -So that's why you had her work on this song ? -No, it's very simple. She sings well. And in the song there are some replies that go 'ah ah', and when I was doing it, it sounded very pop. It was not sensual enough. And Valérie came and did 'ah ah'and then 'Jane Birkin', and when she does, it's magical. She understood immediately. Even if it was just a few sounds and the name Jane Birkin, she immediately understood how to do it. So she didn't write anything on the song, but she contributed. But when she was on her way to meet, she heard something on the taxi on the radio, and also on TV a few nights before, and she was angry saying 'why in all these commercials is there always this message saying For your health, move more while they are selling you a burger ?' And she told me 'you have to write a song about this, it's enough' And I said ok. On the same night I went to see a concert at Les Folies Bergères. -Whose concert ? -No it's ok, it was alright. So we're not going to say who. And I was looking around me and I thought 'I'm falling asleep' and it's a shame because this venue, you shouldn't fall asleep in this venue, you could do something amazing there, there are balconies, there is everything... I thought, why, you shouldn't do something too sentimental here, you have to go right ahead, it's a rave! And I had a flash in my head and I thought, if one day I perform here, what would I do ? And I could hear an organ 'My beloved, we are here to share what binds us. On the TV, on the radio, you hear the same words' To start the gig with. And then I started to laugh while the person on stage was singing something very boring and sentimental, and I was laughing out loud when suddenly I could hear the sentence 'For your health, move more' And this is what opens my album. -So on the visual of this album you are coming out of a cloud like an angel -Like an angel ? I don't know if I'm an angel, it remains to be seen -That's the impression I got, with this blue sky all around. You have worked with Mat Maitland -Yes, my sister, me and Mat Maitland, he's a great English graphic designer -He has worked with many well-known brands, he's known for his collages -Yes but not only brands, he's the visual world of Beck, of Björk, of many things, it's quite an incredible culture. Because the English are very good with the idea of getting associated with an artist in order to build a contemporary graphic world that can tell a lot in just a few lines. That's what I wanted. I draw and my sister also draws and I had the idea of a living logo. To burn and to rip up my former logo because now the logo is something organic, like an alien. He asked what I wanted, I said I want the blob, that my name becomes blobs that will change shapes. And for each song, the logo just like a living blob, an organic shape will change. And so we will never get bored. -It makes me immediately think of your stage sets, I imagine it will be crazy. -Yes, we are working hard! A few years ago, I was so frustrated. There is a mechanism in which the artists find themselves. It's funny because I remember one year ago, I always remember this conversation I had with Big Flo & Oli who asked me plenty of questions 'how did you build that? And why? Everybody tells us we can't' And it's funny because it's what people kept on telling me 'no, it's too expensive. No you don't have the right to. No, you're not an American artist, you're not Madonna, you're not Ariana Grande, you can't do it' -But you are Mika though? -Yes but it's different -And you've always had original, colourful visuals -But you have to fight to get all of this, to be able to develop ideas. So what I did is that I opened an Atelier, and it's constantly creating things, clothes, suits, stage props, inflatable structures... And sometimes I receive phone calls from my office in the US because I have an accountant who follows all this and she's like 'but wait, why are you buying 95 meters of inflatable latex fabric ?'Well it's complicated but... This idea of constantly developing ideas so that when an opportunity comes up, either a concert or a tour or the rugby final like in one week, well what we do for the rugby final, there are elements that took one year and a half to be developed. And they were being developed well before I learnt I would be doing the rugby final with these 100 kids from La Mêlée des Choeurs who will be on stage. Some magical things will happen and it's like a laboratory, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but without chocolate, I don't like chocolate. -You don't? -I confirm. For me it's my happy place, music, sculpture, art, fashion, all of this mixing. I could live in this Atelier but legally I don't have the right to. Because we are in an industrial area, and without hot water. -When you write songs, are you thinking immediately of how it will turn out on stage ? -No but it's a part of the process. I feel a little bit like Inspector Clouseau, I get into a frenzy, I write a song and then I try to identify, to find out how it will develop visually on stage. -And then it has to be ready for early 2024 when your tour starts on March 1st. I wanted to mention your comeback on The Voice, you talked about Big Flo & Oli earlier, they will be your rivals. No, you don't see it like this? You will have to fight. -No, with me, it's more the English way. I don't say it, but afterwards, as soon as I am on the seat, the fight is on. -You'll also be next to Vianney with whom you have collaborated on Keep It Simple, how is it to work with him ? -It was extremely cool and extremely simple. That's how we make music, we sit on a sofa, me with a piano on my left, him with a guitar, and 20 minutes later the song is there. -The song was written in 20 minutes -It's often like this. Most of the time, either with Vianney or with someone else or me on my own, we spend hours and hours searching and then it's written in 15, 20, 30 minutes. -What's it like being coach on The Voice for you ? I like it because I don't change who I am. And I feel like I can express myself without fearing consequences. What is remarkable with the French version, and that is not the case at all in other countries, is that some contestants have big careers. At my first season I thought 'if I do it, there has to be something concrete coming out of it' otherwise we are not believable in our speeches, and I remember once I had a moment of fright because at the first season I turned my chair and there was a young man singing a Maître Gims song with his guitar, flamenco style, and I said 'I can guarantee that you are the only person..' they even cut out a part of my speech, I said 'you are the first person I hear today who will sell albums afterwards' -You were right. -It was Kendji. But it's not that I was right, it's that I told myself that with this kind of things, we can build careers. And I'm not the only one who did that, like now what's happening with Mentissa, what happened with Frero Delavega, Louane, all this is real. -Are you impatient to go back ? -To be honest I enjoy myself there. In a job where you really have to find some bubbles where you can really express yourself and be yourself, there I have never never never pretended, I have never said something I didn't believe. We go through strong emotions and it's different each time. I think in the 2nd part he also talks a bit about Apocalypse Calypso, I will try to add that tomorrow

I wish I had more time to work on translations ! If only this could be my full time job But I will try to post some stuff when I can

I also got that email today and joked that it would be nice if at least I received my order for Christmas Well as we all know patience is a virtue

He says the chorus goes : Qu'est-ce qu'il va faire chez les Grecs? Est-ce que là bas ya un mec ? Please excuse my French Mais je crois bien que c'est fini Moi, Andy et Paris

As I saw someone on Instagram request a transcription of the verse lyrics from Mika's latest Tiktok, here they are : C'est quoi le beau, c'est quoi le vrai? C'est quoi le faux, c'est quoi le laid? Qu'est-ce que tout ça vient faire ici? C'est quoi ces rides sur mon visage? Pourquoi elles viennent cafter mon âge? Même si vieillir est un naufrage Which would translate into: What is beauty, what is truth ? What is fake, what is ugliness ? What does it have to do with anything ? What are these wrinkles on my face? Why do they snitch on my age? Even if getting old is like a wreck (Truth and fake could also be right and wrong)

@QueenBigFat ! Ok, to be completely honest, your introduction made me cry too... I've been on this ride following him for nearly 15 years now and sometimes it's good to have someone putting words on what I also feel and the reason why I've been here all along. I'm glad you found him ! Enjoy MFC, I'm sure you still have plenty to discover !