stefa

Nice interview indeed. Here is a quick translation. Cheers Stefania I don’t know all Grace Kelly’s movies. I started because of my grandma (Grace Kelly runs) my grandma had an husband from Siria in Beirut, and then they moved to USA. She could just speak arabian and the first time they went out for dinner they went with all my granddad’s friends and Grace Kelly was there. She was speaking a lot and after a while my grandma was very sad and started to cry since she could not understand anything. So the image of Grace Kelly has stayed in my head all my life, since my grandma kept repeating this story all the time. There was a period where I had lots of problems in the music industry since nobody could imagine a future for me, everybody wanted me to be like Robbie Williams. So one day I went home and I decided I did not want to be like somebody else but I just wanted to be myself. This is the message of this song. In this moment when I was angry I found the first song of my pop career. ( Now Relax starts) I don’t like the word “best of”, so I changed it to “songbook”, since in one’s career there are lots of songbooks. It is a project only for Italy while I am working on the italian X factor challenge. It is a project that started in Milan, with italian designers. It is the first project I did without my sister, and I think she is a bit jealous. (now Blame it on the girls starts). This record is the story of my life. It is like looking at my life and career in a mirror. I cannot listen to my music on the radio, usually I turn it off. I don’t have a song of my life, since I will be able to say this only when I am in my deathbed. (now Popular starts) It is very strange since the video has 38 million views, although we did not put it in the radio. It is very strange. I made this version since I met Ariana Grande one year ago. She was creating an album alone, and I saw her as a very young talented girl, so I wanted to do something with her. So I agreed to have this new version with her, although I thought it would not work. And I was wrong. (now Rain starts) I am always wrong when something good is going to happen, and becomes fantastic, I am wrong. This is normal for an artist, since I look at my work without taking any distance. I don’t want a real distance, I want to stay in this imaginary distance, since this is the most creative one in my opinion. (Now Stardust starts, the italian version, with Chiara) I was afraid of recording this song simply because when we had played the song together in X factor on TV we had a good time, and I was afraid the same feeling could not repeat. But we made it, since the record version is quite different. I love this collaboration and I love Chiara’s voice. (Underwater is starting now) Underwater for me is a very pop song, but not a normal pop song. This song is very artistic. When I was a bit fragile I wrote this song to warm up, to get some power, like a medicine. I think this is the reason why it had success, since it works for others, not just for me. It is very hard to communicate with italians (they show him now in some X factor episodes). I want to speak like Elio. Morgan is like oxygen with fire. Elio has helped me a lot. (then they show him when he introduces “Friday I am in love” to Violetta, and she does not know the song. Then they show more X factor videos.). It is not fair since Morgan is working only with two, while I have four, and they are good but I need lots of time to work with them. They are very young and maybe I am too hard with them, but that is the education I am used to. I don’t like that singers change just for the pressure of the public, so I want to be hard. (Now Lollipop starts) What I like the best of italian culture is the food culture, since food is the most important thing in life, together with music. Food is what gives me the desire to wake up in the morning. It is an happy culture, anarchic, that works. I come from a big family. Last summer we were 48 people from my family during the holidays. In France they would be afraid of such a group, but in italy they are used. There is a connection between my libanese culture and italian culture, this is why I feel comfortable with Italian culture. (Now big girl) I am not so interested on fashion, I am interested on style. I am afraid of fashion. It is important to have a mix of very expensive and very cheap thing. Like a 6 dollars t-shirt from the US with a Valentino jacket, not to be like a credit card. It is very easy to enter a store and say “ok I want this, 5000 euros, like a doll”. (Now Happy ending) There are many things I would like to do. My life is weird. I work in France, Italy, USA. I would have never imagined so many things. Japan, Korea…. This is for me is the most important thing. When life does not change I cannot find inspiration, and when I do not find inspiration I cannot write songs, since for me the most important is music and find inspiration to write songs. I am completely obsessed with the idea of an album. I know that now it is not considered important now, but for me an album is a consideration of my life in the past two years. I want that when I am 80 years old I can look at my past life with albums every two or three years with design, illustrations, melodies, stories, illustrations, characters. This is my biggest ambition. (Now Love today) I want also to be the direction of an opera, write a musical comedy my way, draw lots of books, write many stories, I want to do many things. Completely random. I always prepare like crazy, then when I have to do something I am “casual”.

Basically what Elio is saying is that Mika's singers have already an advantage simply because they are part of Mika's team and he is a star. Morgan does not agree with it, and Mika obviously does not agree either, stating that he just lost Roberta whom he thought was his best singer, although she needed to work on her image.

Hi Christine I am Italian and it really does not appeal to me either, for the same reasons you have eloquently described several times and I am not going to repeat. I also do not think X-factor Italy is different from any of the other talent shows around. Regarding the judges, Elio seems a clever one, although he looks very bored there. Simona is often disliked in Italy as somebody else said, but in my opinion not because she is a woman with opinions (and too bad those are an exception in Italy) but because she tries to be clever and classy, but she really fails at that. In my opinion Morgan is also annoying, trying to show off his "culture" which impresses only....well the fans of X-factor... Stefania

You are so right. I am italian, and I consider it as yet another crappy talent show.

Believe it or not, the "old" one is only 11 years older than Mika....

Thanks for the nice reports! I was also there and I do not have much to add. I completely agree with the description of the french singer before Mika. I also felt he was very arrogant and one of those "look at me how hot I am" kind of guy. The end of his concert was completely painful. Sabine described it perfectly. Jamie Cullum was very energetic and a good entertainer, although in some songs he could in my opinion improve the lyrics, for example when he repeated about 50 times that he was fine.... I had a great time at Mika's. Like everybody else said, he was super energetic and in good mood. As already mentioned the sound was not well balanced in the songs with electronics. For example when Mika was singing "Rain", I could barely hear him, all I could hear was the bass. I noticed he asked the sound technician to fix it after that song and there was a little improvement. As you can see I am new and at the end I wanted to say hi to the lovely girls I recognize from here, but I really had to find a toilet and when I came back I could not see anybody anymore. Next time... The morning after the concert I met the whole band at the train station, and congratulated with their performance. They were very surprised and grateful. Especially Max seems very sweet. It almost sounded like nobody acknowledges them. Joy even told me "thanks for having us here!", as if I had anything to do with the organization Cheers Stefania

I am italian, and I do not really understand why other italians claim that the foreigners are just jealous about this situation. I think it is a fact that this show is crappy, and Mika is selling his soul to it, compromising his talent. Unfortunately I was not in the audience at the NA tour, but just looking at the youtube videos I really wish I could have been part of it, so I can totally sympathize with Christine's feelings. Considering the other people involved in the x-show, do we also want to say that Simona Ventura (the other confirmed judge) is a classy and talented person? I also do not think that being 2nd at the Sanremo festival is something to brag about, .certainly not something that makes you a talented musician. Just to make everybody even more depressed, here is a link to the award winning song of this italian co-judge star: let's just hope that Mika does not get THIS low in quality.....

Apart from a bit fat paycheck, I really do not see anything positive for him in it. It is especially bad it is announced after such a successful NA tour. I really do not understand how he can so easily shift from the glamour of Dita to the trash of italian TV.

Thank you for the welcome everybody! Marina: grazie dopo guardo anche il thread italiano.

Hi, just wanted to quickly introduce myself. I am an italian living in Copenhagen. I have been listening to Mika for a while, but I had the opportunity to go to my first concert only last december in London. Somehow I felt something was missing, so I decided to go the next day to Manchester and absolutely loved it! Now I am looking forward to more. Ciao Stefania