Anna Ko Kolkowska

When Mika was quoiting first verses in his interviews I thought he would put his story in a "funny" way. I mean in the way that at the end he sais - we are ok now, c'est la vie. But actually it was the first song on the album which made me cry. Really really cry. Mika sounds so sad and there is no happy ending in the lyrics. SO beautiful song full of love and doubts...

It's from Vanuatu Islands

Yes, it makes sense in Mika's language 😜 Everything is flat. Like a sea with no wind.

I think it's "tout est flate"

Wreszcie długi tekst w polskich mediach!!!! Mimo kilku błędów i nieścisłości autor - Jarosław Pietrzak - naprawdę przyłożył się, żeby opowiedzieć o Mice w swobodny i żartobliwy sposób. https://queer.pl/artykul/206891/glowa-pelna-kwiatow-premiera-szostego-studyjnego-albumu-miki

Polish website QUEER.PL sent me a link to its long text about Mika written before the release of his new French album. There is a few "mistakes" or misinterpretations but I am happy that at last someone took time to write a long text about Mika and his music https://queer.pl/artykul/206891/glowa-pelna-kwiatow-premiera-szostego-studyjnego-albumu-miki?fbclid=IwAR3p-AFzSt5dB4zWGGnBVoIbMQkbKO_xVGNtBu0KzGnJTsh9CTUylNwlI-c Google translation into English: A head full of flowers - premiere of Mika's sixth studio album The premiere of Mika's sixth studio album, Que ta tête fleurisse toujours, is announced for December 1, 2023. Four years since the artist's last LP, My Name Is Michael Holbrook (apart from live albums and hit compilations). Mika released the song announcing the new album quite unexpectedly, performing the song at the Francofolies festival in the Belgian city of Spa and breaking several years of secrecy surrounding the work on the new album. The official video for the single C'est la Vie is a not very complicated animation: a lot of greenery in the background, on which a demonstratively bent and bent singer in a pale pink suit with a huge peony bursting out of it, more or less in the place of the heart, floats. French lyrics slide along the way. At one point, flowers fall out of his head, which opens. The title of the album can be translated: "May flowers always grow from your head." The artist's star shone on the Vistula River for a short time, in fact only with his debut album Life in Cartoon Motion from 2007. The song Relax, Take It Easy in Poland was then captured by an advertising campaign of one of the mobile operators. Soon after, this charming boy was practically forgotten in Poland. At the same time, Mika (sometimes: MIKA) is still appreciated in Great Britain, even if he is no longer as popular there as he was a dozen or so years ago, but he is loved like few others in France (and the entire European "Francophonie"), in Italy he is popular that they put him there to host the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin in 2022 with Laura Pausini, and in South Korea his concerts can fill the Olympic Stadium in Seoul. So let's finally dig him out of the harmful oblivion he fell into on the Vistula River. A boy from Beirut Michael Holbrook Penniman Jr. was born on August 18, 1983 in the capital of Lebanon, Beirut, in the family of an American Michael Holbrook Penniman and a Lebanese woman Joanna Mouakad, who met in New York. He is the middle of their five children. The other four are three sisters, Yasmina, Paloma and Zuleika, and a brother, Fortuné. Mika is his nickname from Lebanon, derived from the name Michael in Arabic, invented by his mother and quickly adopted by the rest of his family and friends. He has dual citizenship - American (inherited from his father) and British (by inheritance) - but when the conversation comes to his nationality, he always means his Lebaneseness. In reactions to serious questions (what is most Lebanese in his music or personality? - he will answer: undisguised sentimentality) - and in jokes, because he is also a bit of a joker with a charming distance to himself. ― But I have to pluck my eyebrows because I'm Lebanese! Without it, I would have one big eyebrow across my entire forehead! – he laughed on British television, drawing this eyebrow on his face with his finger. In the French edition of the television format "The Voice", in which he was a juror-mentor for five seasons (and will return to this role in 2024), he once slumped in this huge armchair, in a theatrically exaggerated gesture of disappointment (he was not chosen by someone as a mentor ) and sighed: ― In this edition, only those jurors who turn around first are selected. And what am I suppose to do? I'm always late, I'm Lebanese, it's genetic for me. When in the summer of 2020, a huge explosion in the Beirut port wiped out a large part of the city, Mika, despite pandemic lockdowns, organized the I Love Beirut charity concert on his own. He called for help, among others. Kylie Minogue, Salma Hayek (also with Lebanese roots) and the legendary, now disbanded Lebanese band Mashrou 'Leila (Hamed Sinno sang with them, partly in Arabic, Promiseland). He broadcast it from an empty theater on YouTube. He collected one million euros for the Red Cross to help his beloved city. Paris, London and the Gulf War However, Mika did not spend much time in Lebanon. In the 1980s, the country was torn apart by a war of varying intensity. When Mika was only a year old, his family fled to Paris, where his well-connected father got a well-paid job (in a bank). From then on, in exile, Lebanese culture was what their mother filled their family home with. In Paris, little Mika also absorbed another language and another culture. He would later repeatedly affirm his attachment to specifically French melodicism. Barbara (1930-1997), little known in Poland, is still one of his favorite performers. In his first season on the jury of "The Voice", Mika will lead to the victory of 17-year-old Catalan Roma Kendji Girac, with whom in the final he will sing probably Barbara's biggest hit (she sold a million copies in 12 hours), L'Aigle noir. Childhood in a wealthy district of Paris (with a school with uniforms) was abruptly interrupted by 1990 and the First Gulf War. Michael Holbrook's father found her outburst on a business trip to Kuwait. The captured man found himself in captivity for many months. Left with five children, Joannie packed up and looked for a way to survive the situation in London, where there is also a significant Lebanese community. Many months without his father, but knowing how serious a threat he was in, were a traumatic experience for the boy. At the same time, it tied him forever to the poetics and structures of fairy tales. Fear and horror are some of his great themes. Toy Boy is about a boy-doll who is tormented by fears that from the point of view of the adult world there is something suspicious about the boy who hugs him falling asleep with him. Like the uncensored Brothers Grimm, the doll's eyes will be gouged out at the end. In Lady Jane we have a character who encourages a man in love to tread water (drown). In 1991, Michael Holbrook's father was released and returned to his family. Initially, for the boy it was an extension of the trauma - it was so difficult for him to recognize this emaciated and bearded man as his father. However, the family remained in London. "Because I write songs" In London, Mika had no problem with the language because his parents already spoke English in Lebanon. But he had problems at school. He didn't even mention it at home, but the children there were punished by sitting still for hours on an exposed chair, even if they needed to go to the bathroom. At most, they were additionally humiliated. One day little Mika forgot his school bag. Yasmina, his older sister (she will design several album covers for him in the future), found out and took it to him at school. She walked into the classroom and saw him sitting there. She took him by the hand and took him home, raising the alarm in the family. The mother made such a fuss at school that... little Mika was expelled from school. Joanna decided that the boy would study at home, even if he had to struggle with dyslexia so severe that for some time - as he later said - he practically couldn't write. As long as he studies music seriously. At the age of seven he had already written his first song, even if he later said that "it was terrible". This is how little Mika came under the care of a Russian opera singer who was teaching singing in London at the time. Alla Ablaberdyeva, known in London as Alla Ardakov, turned out to be so severe and unceremonious (she used methods such as violently lifting a singing boy off the floor to exercise his diaphragm) that at times Mika missed school. She was severe, but he owes her first performance on stage at the age of eleven - in Richard Strauss' opera The Woman Without a Shadow (Die Frau ohne Schatten). For several years, Mika studied classical music - mainly singing - at the Royal Conservatory in London. Even though his voice moves freely within five octaves, he spent these years convinced that as an opera performer he would never be as good as some of his colleagues. One of them, the Swede Ida Falk Winland, noticed how tired he was, because sometimes he only completed tasks with trivial tasks just to have some peace and quiet. ― Mika, why are you here? – she finally asked him. "Because I write songs," he admitted. He admitted, because he hid it from his teachers, that he was looking for a music publisher for them (working on a pop album while studying was not welcomed in these respectable walls). - What? Show me. He played and sang Happy Ending to her. Later, they will perform this song together many times, both in the official version, which will be included on the debut album, and in various concert performances. Grace Kelly He was 21 years old then. He prepared a demo with his songs (33 songs) and wandered around with it from studio to studio. Later he said he heard from them: ― You're great, but couldn't you write something more like Robbie Williams or Craig David? – it was the best seller back then. The fourth time, he left the meeting so frustrated that he did what Mika likes best, which is to sit at the piano and write a song in one night. Grace Kelly, one of the most joyful and nonchalant acts of revenge in music history. "I could be brown, I could be blue, I could be violet sky" - he sings, twisting spectacular falsettos - but if he has to choose, he prefers to be "like Grace Kelly". For Lebanese grandmother Mika, the unforgettable Hitchcock actress, who later became Princess of Monaco, was the embodiment of perfection. Towards the end, the text goes completely haywire: "Can you unhook yourself? Look older? What else do I have to do to get it on your shelf?” He sent this song to the label. They understood - they never responded. But the demo finally ended up in good hands at Island Records in London. In 2006, Grace Kelly made a sensation as a single (topping the charts in Great Britain), the Dodgy Holiday EP was also released digitally, and industry experts had no doubts: Mika would be the biggest new event in pop music in 2007. And so it happened. The Life in Cartoon Motion longplay sold 8.3 million copies. "Music Genius" The journalist who first introduced 23-year-old Mika to the television audience was the presenter of the French program "Taratata", Nagui. He even shouted to the audience in the studio and in front of the TV sets that they had in front of them a "musical genius". After a long break from everyday contact with French, Mika spoke the language with charming mistakes (he was confused about the grammatical genders of nouns). Nagui wasn't exaggerating. Not only because Mika is an extraordinary performer who charges across the range of his voice, shooting out thunderous falsettos and playing with the listener with vocalizations. He once said that his dream was to create songs that no one would be able to reproduce in karaoke. Mika is not only a performer, but also the total author of his songs: he composes music and writes lyrics at the same time. Music and words result from each other and fuel each other. Only texts in languages other than English Mika writes with "autochthons". In French, many of them are co-authored by Doriand, in Italian, Mika often performs lyrics by Lucio Dalli. Mika is a sponge for music, styles, even mannerisms of various artists. A sponge that absorbs all these influences and fascinations, mixes them in its own way and finally throws out something that in one fell swoop is very clearly associated with something (e.g. with the music of the 80s, with Freddie Mercury, or with the Beatles, or with romantic French chanson from the 1950s) and at the same time bears a clear signature of his own personality and interests. In Grace Kelly he sounded "a bit like Freddie" (this is even mentioned in the lyrics) - and a bit like Freddie, he used elements of opera for his purposes. He opened the song with a musical phrase borrowed from The Marriage of Figaro. "I can be brown, I can be blue" plays on the same notes as Mozart's "Figaro-ci, Figaro-là". And for good reason. The Viennese opera was conceived as a form of insult to the rules and social relations of its time - like Grace Kelly to the relations in the contemporary entertainment industry. Mika believes in songs that take stories, states or feelings that are painful or complicated, but enchant them in the form of a simple story, evoking strong images, pumped with music, sometimes in contrast to the theme, danceable, joyful or simple. In songs that make difficult things expressible or allow you to become familiar. Relax, Take It Easy was created on the night after the London Underground bombings in July 2005. Mika was returning home on the Underground when an alarm was announced, trains were stopped in various places, passengers were evacuated at stations they didn't know. Returning home at night, he sat down (again) at the piano and encapsulated in this song a mixture of confused feelings: from fear, through coming to terms with the lack of control over the situation that was overwhelming him, to the hope of regaining a beneficial contact with a loved one. Elle me dit - the song also has a version (probably not a translation) in English, titled Emily - it talks about a period when his family was already in such trouble that they had no money to pay the bills. Stuck in the Middle - about a rocky relationship with a strict, traditional and very demanding grandmother. The boy who didn't tell everything With his first two albums (the second being The Boy Who Knew Too Much, 2009), Mika was trapped in a rather paradoxical relationship with his British label. To some extent, it exploited his queer-boyish sex appeal, far from his masculine, conquering, muscular masculinity. Beautiful, big, erotically dreamy Arab eyes. A disarming smile – or with lips parted as if in expectation or surprise. Crazy luscious curls. Tall but very slim figure. Island Records knew perfectly well that this was part of the charm with which Mika captivated his audience, perfectly rhyming with the eroticism of the lyrics of his songs. Mika never made a secret of the fact that he wrote a great Love Today, because he was bursting with happiness after being comfortable in bed with someone for the first time in his life. At the same time, the studio was concerned that there was something too "hot" about it. That its homoerotic temperature may rise above the controlled level at any time and translate into a marketing risk. That instead of the planet-scale superstar they had hoped to create, they would end up with an artist of a small niche of identity. Mika kept his balance on this unstable edge, but he felt like he couldn't quite be himself. Both first albums included songs with homoerotic content, but, for example, told in the third person (Billy Brown), or with disturbing but unclear homoerotic overtones (Toy Boy). But there were also songs "about boys and girls" for balance. In addition, many songs used the lockpicks offered by the English language. When a man in love addresses someone he loves in the second person, as long as he doesn't use first names or call that person a woman or a man (boy or girl), English adjectives (or second-person verbs) do not differentiate between genders - the listener can do about it what he wants, imagine what he prefers. All this together could be presented as the voice of an entire generation that already accepted human sexual diversity, but did not have to say anything more. For the first few years as a young star, Mika, clearly embarrassed by his publisher's concerns, despite the clear (and correctly interpreted by many from the beginning) "hints" placed in his work (and in his image), avoided open declarations regarding his sexuality and personal life. The huge success of the first two albums resulted in long tours with lots of performances. When he performs a lot, Mika doesn't usually write - he needs concentration that is impossible during periods of concerts. After a long break from writing, he had trouble switching back from the performer mode to the author and composer mode. “I felt like the audience already knew what my new song was going to sound like before I even started writing it,” he later confided. He was a bit of a prisoner of his own success. Then a serious accident threatened the health of Paloma's beloved sister. The topic will come back one day in the song Paloma, dedicated to her, which also plays with the meaning of this name ("dove" in Spanish). But not right away, only for a later album (one of many examples of how slowly and carefully Mika develops his themes). At this stage, the emotional upheaval pushed him to break the block. He put aside his worries about the reaction of the audience and the industry - he simply started writing what he was curious about and what he wanted to try. He gave himself the freedom to explore new inspirations and sounds (like synth-pop). After all, he had already experienced the experience of being a big pop star - apart from that, he also wanted to be himself. “Only when you're not afraid to be silly can you do something truly creative,” he will say one day about that moment. This is how the Origin of Love album was born. The album, which did not sell like the previous ones, probably did not exist in the public consciousness in Poland at all, and at the same time, some of the songs from there in some countries - such as France and South Korea - were among Mika's most immortal hits. In France, Underwater always sings with an audience - thousands of people - as a choir. The year was 2012. Then, 28-year-old Mika finally told the world: ― Yes, all my love songs are about loving a man. Becoming fully yourself is a project that will conclude with the album, My Name Is Michael Holbrook (2019). Michael Holbrook Penniman Jr. and the boyish persona nicknamed Mika, through which he spoke for a long time, but also behind which he hid, will finally become one. When he first publicly admitted that he was gay and in a relationship with a man, that man was the man he is with to this day: Greek director and editor Andreas Dermanis (they have been together for 18 years). He will later make a video for the brilliant (and unusual for him) song Yo Yo. He will be the hero of one of the songs on the upcoming French album. Based on a glance at the title list, you might expect it to be Moi, Andy et Paris. Mika laughed in a radio interview that it was a little revenge (for jumping sideways?) because Andreas doesn't speak French. "I love this country" ― J'aime ce pays - he once said about France, probably more than once. Since his adult, mainly professional return, he has spent many years there on and off, even though he has been living mainly in Italy (Tuscany) for some time now. He says that France allowed him to be himself. A country where, even with his sexuality, he felt completely accepted from the very beginning. On the Seine, no one was afraid of the consequences of his gayly "too hot" aura. He now talks about his homosexuality openly and without fear, seriously and jokingly. There was a visible transformation in him. He sings without fear the lyrics in which he asks "where have the gay guys gone?" (Good Guys); tells the anxieties of a boy brought up in a religious culture (Mika's family, also on the Arab side, is Catholic), about "sins" and "all the loves he had to hide" (No Place In Heaven); he fantasizes that he could be a "good wife" for someone (Good Wife; all three songs from the album No Place in Heaven, 2015). The video for Underwater (from the album Origin of Love) can be read homoerotic. He allowed his over-the-top gentleness to freely come to the fore, without hiding behind boyishness. Suits embroidered with birds or flowers, jackets sparkling with sequins, bright socks, shoes sparkling with glitter (from Louboutin, designed especially for him, so that they look like inconspicuous, very shiny sneakers, but strong enough so that he won't break his legs when jumping so much and constantly standing on the tips of your fingers). There is a beautiful adjective in English and French - flamboyant. Nothing describes it well enough in Polish - not in the sense of referring to a certain figure of a homosexual man. No one today dresses it in a more disarming way than Mika. Jane Birkin The latest French album will feature a song about Jane Birkin (revealed on November 17), which talks about "dreaming about love à la Jane Birkin." Jane Birkin is a legendary actress and singer, who died this summer, best associated in the world with the 1972 hit, Je t'aime, moi non plus, sung with her partner Serge Gainsbourg. The Englishwoman who chose France was a bigger star there than in her homeland, even though she never got rid of her foreign accent (or maybe she never wanted to). If love à la Jane Birkin is reciprocated love for France and the French, then Mika's dream has already come true. It is as popular there as anywhere else in the world. The Apocalypse Calypso tour related to the latest album (starts in March 2024) has most of the concerts planned in France - and this is not the first time. It will occur at least once in almost every region of the country. Mika has already recorded songs in French (Elle me dit, Boum boum boum, the French version of Grace Kelly, covers of other artists). For the first time, however, the entire original album will consist exclusively of songs in Molière's language. Just as Jane Birkin came to terms with her foreign accent, Mika wanted the new album to also bear traces of the mistakes he sometimes makes in French. First of all, he treats it as his personal signature, a sign of his own form of intimate contact with this language. Secondly, he is excited by the poetic possibilities opened up by using foreign languages (he also speaks Italian, which he learned in two months to be a juror on the local "X Factor", and Spanish). As he says, sometimes the fact that you don't know how to say something in a given language "normally" prompts you to look for an unexpected metaphor. He chose a phrase for the album's title as if to spite the Anglo-Saxons - too difficult for them to read and remember. Maybe it's because he never made it to the top of the charts in America - even though his records sell well there and he gives successful concerts, he literally never was played on the radio. Too "hot" texts (or, as they say, too explicit). Today Mika doesn't care. The title of the album, Que ta tête fleurisse toujours, is a phrase from the song C'est la Vie - a quote from his mother. She once gave him a birthday present, on which she drew his face with colorful flowers bursting from it. She signed it, "May flowers always grow from your head." It was one of his last birthdays at which she was present. Joannie died of cancer in February 2021. The song is a kind of farewell tribute to her mother – and to what she kept alive (“her Lebanon that [now] is blurring”). It doesn't sound like a funeral song at all. In one of the already recorded performances, she sings C'est la Vie with a choir of kids, like a great affirmation of life. But Mika has such a song philosophy. Mika once said that his big dream is an album that will be like the Lebanese community he remembers from London, where everyone speaks three languages at once. CD with songs in Arabic, English and French. Maybe this one will be next - and maybe it's already being quietly developed, but it needs a few more years to complete it. Jarosław Pietrzak

Yes, it's in Paris, studio 217. It's Idille agency who is organizing the audience.

Mika is scheduled for the 26th of July at Musicalarue in Luxey, France. https://www.musicalarue.com/2023/11/28/mika/ Tickets are not yet on sale. Don't forget to RSVP if you're going to this festival!

Recently when I was watching French TV in the Internet I I've heard this phrase several times "pour votre sante bougez plus". So I think it's quite recent. But when you hear it 20 times per day it can become annoying. As well in France after the alcohol ads they say : "buvez avec moderation" Well in Poland since some years we don't have anymore ads with cigarettes and alkohol on TV or radio (only beer 0%) so we don't hear "smoking can kill you", "after drinking alcohol don't drive".

Actually Zlata is looking for a seated place in Bordeaux close to the stage. I talked with her.

Well Mika didn't show us too much as lyrics. pour votre sante, allez-y en bouge pour votre sante, allez-y en bouge (drop) pour votre sante bougez...... plus aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bougez sautez (or sante) bougez sautez (or sante) bougez sautez (or sante) bougez encore

Hi Zlata. Please check Ticketmaster.fr. i can see standing tickets available. And seated ones in the back of the venue.

Mika announcing his virtual concert with new songs on YouTube channel L'Invit.Live on Friday Dec 1 at 7pm.

The virtual concert for L'Invit Live will be broadcast this Friday December 1st on YouTube.

Yes, this symphonic evening when talents are performing with an orchestra.

I can't wait to hear the whole song!!!!!!!!!! The French language which plays on the sounds - some words you pronounce in the same way but you write it differently and the meaning is different - it's a poetry for my ears. In this part we can see the loving part. What about anger? We have to wait till Friday.

Seems it's not a scarf but .... a sweater!!!!!!

Toi qui me laisse, toi qui me mene ?? Logic - you leave me, you lead me (you guide me)

Oh, when I've checked it an hour ago I've seen a case where you could send an email to request a place. But now it's different.

Still places for the autographs session the 2nd of December in Paris!

It's posted as well on Twitter.

No, just one song. But he was present in the studio from the beginning to the end talking as well with other guests.

I recorder an audio on my mobile. Like this I can listen to Mika's interviews even on the plane

As I recall from the first interviews about this French album he said that he wanted to write at least 50% of the lyrics of each song by himself. So I can imagine they were cooperating in some way while spending time together. Maybe he had already an idea of the song and other co-writers (Doriand, Carla) added their ideas, words, lines.

A slow.. to catch a breath after performing all these crazy dancing songs 😜