IngievV Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 I think this is an old interview, so I don't know of it has been posted already, but here it is anyway: Where have you been? This isn't some ridiculous trend you've fallen asleep and half-missed, this is MIKA, the most ebullient bundle of pop tunes you're going to hear all year! Mika, a former opera singer who used to end up being entertained by his own voice when queuing on the British Airways ticketing hotline, has featured on almost every tipster's list for 2007, and is releasing his debut album Life In Cartoon Motion at the beginning of February. Born in Lebanon, raised in Paris and London and now unleashing his cartoon pop stories on the world, believe us when we say that this isn't even hype - this is the real thing, done brilliantly. You’re getting quite popular now which requires stringent decision making. So, are you going to be a nice grounded popstar or a hysterical diva? I don't have any particular kind of hook ups about attitudes or that kind of thing, that drives me just crazy. At the end of the day you've gotta sit down and write another song and there's nothing more humanizing than that because you have to be in the same place. It's kind of like going to the toilet, it’s like everyone has to do it, it's part of the job. If you have too many quabbles about the way you're treated and stuff it's a bit ridiculous but at the same time I'm extremely controlling and fussy about the way that I work. Everything's gotta be done the right way, because I’m the only one who loses out it’s my life. It's funny, some people think I'm totally great and some people think I'm the biggest pain in the ass, the worst thing that's ever walked into their office. What's the worst thing you've ever done to somebody? Scrap websites six times, or remix my album. I went through eleven mixes of one song... not remixes, actual mixes. I remastered the album four times…. Did you ever make anybody cry? Yes. On my press kit, one of the last lines is “I've made people cry making this album and I'll probably continue doing that till I stop making records” but that's part of the job. I'm a solo artist so I fight my battles with everyone I work with as opposed to internally with my band. People either love you or hate you, there's no real middle ground. The whole Marmite thing? Yeah, I'm quite proud of it actually. What is it that polarizes people so much? It's very uncompromising, it's a very singular vision. Anything that smells of an artist that much is clearly going to be a smell that you like, or one you just don't like, there's nothing in-between. I think it’s a very good thing. Does the diva aspect come from starting off in opera? Not really, I just did that for a bit. When I moved over from France as a kid I ended up going to a French state school in South Kensington, I had a really hard time and I ended up leaving, so I didn't go to school for about six months. I didn't have anything to do, my mum was like “I need to get this kid back on his feet again, he's a bit of a mess, what am I going to do?” so she got me this very tough singing teacher. I was always into music but by then it was two hours a day it just kind of took over my life, I had nothing else to do and I got really good really quickly. How old were you? Eleven. My first ever gig was at the Royal Opera House doing the chorus for a Strauss opera and it kind of led from there. It was really fast, because when you're trained, taken out of school through circumstance, you get really serious about it. I never made any money, so to me it was really hard work for nothing, it was all just experience. It's not really that sexy either is it, opera at 11... Yeah, it doesn’t really make you cool, does it? It was cool to me! There’s no other building in the world that’s cooler than the Royal Opera House. It was a fake world that was great, great to make a living doing that. What followed on from that? I did session work. I was so cheap because my mother had no idea what we were supposed to be charging, so I got £45 for an Orbit chewing gum commercial. I got lots of jobs and I was really fast, I did everything from Royal Opera House to jingles to contemporary music in Warsaw. Then I went to the Royal College of Music, studying the classical scene, but I was always writing pop songs from a young age. Because I could never read music, I was writing my own stuff. I dropped out just over a year ago now and I'm making this record. That's ridiculous, it's so quick... Well, it's been quick but it hasn't. I've had my break about 48 times but it never really worked out. Now it seems to be pulling through so I'm happy. Your songs tread some line between Elton John, Freddie Mercury and Scissor Sisters, so is it old pop or new pop for you? Elton. The early Elton. But then again the Scissor Sisters did stuff on their first album that I hadn’t really heard before, that reworking of that Pink Floyd song is genius. I just have this thing about reclaiming pop, about making “artist” records, because there's not a lot of solo artists making records that sound “big.” There was a trend that came in towards the end of the ‘90s that if you're a solo artist then you make singer-songwriter records that are anchored at an instrument, mostly a guitar or a piano. Unless you're in a band, you can't make big records. I was like “Wow, I'm a singer-songwriter, I'm not going to be anchored at the piano, there's no hope in hell of keeping me there for more than a couple of songs”. I write at the piano, but I wanna make huge-sounding pop records. That's really my thing, and to get inspiration for that you go back to the ‘70s and the ‘80s, because that's the only time people were really doing that, it's disappeared apart from someone like Beck, I can't really think of many others. Hardly anyone actually. And pop's only just starting to rescue itself from that whole bland controlling boy group/girl group thing as well. And also you can say pop! I was reading an article yesterday about Alex Kapranos, and he's written an article about food. They referred to him as a pop star, and I was like “That's exactly what he is”. I was having an argument with a friend of mine a few nights ago about how there are no rock stars any more. Is Pete Doherty a rock star? Over my dead body! Well, over his more likely. He's not a rock star, he's a pop star, he's in Grazia. There’s no such thing as rock star anymore, and that’s kind of reflected in pop music. What is rock music now? It could be death metal, but pop is stretched out so much, Bjork makes pop music, she says it herself, and it's getting very cool again. You would have worked so well on Top of the Pops, all that glitz and cartoonishness. Damn BBC1. I know. I did T4 last night, I had to sing live. There were bits that weren't live because they can't handle it. Gwen Stefani was on before and after me and she does all this stuff that no-one knows. It seems like she does all the singles in one go so when they release the next one she doesn’t have to come all the way back to record the performance. Why Grace Kelly? Why not Bette Davis or somebody else? Because Grace Kelly is more interesting than Bette Davis in terms of snapshot life, wasn’t she? She was this normal girl from England, then she became one of the biggest movie stars in the world, then became royalty, and then died. And the way she died, it's like “C'mon!”, a soap opera on ecstasy. 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IngievV Posted October 12, 2007 Author Share Posted October 12, 2007 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanessa Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 Woowwww!Amazing interview !!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxLollypop_girlxx Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 I have not seen it, thanks for posting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greta Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 aw thank you very much:huglove: it's so interesting!! Have you translated it or what?..this is actually the best interview I've read! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IngievV Posted October 12, 2007 Author Share Posted October 12, 2007 aw thank you very much:huglove: it's so interesting!! Have you translated it or what?..this is actually the best interview I've read! Nope, it's exactly the way I found it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarah_Lollipop Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 I haven't seen this before. Thanks for posting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avoca Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 aside the whole missing school for six month thing and the opera part, I haven't read the rest and it was amazing. thx for posting. also that part about his family coming from south part of beirut, i didn't know that. he's rather more manolo than tesco to me.. but it's ok: you get away with everything, don't you, mr M..? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruth Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 That was interesting. Thanks for typing it all in! I like this quotation: "To be a season whore is pointlessly unfashionable and you might as well be eclectic and keep people guessing." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AKateisaKate Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 Ooooh great interview! T4P!!And FINALLY we know where he's from! We were trying to figure it all out in the Leb. Thread!! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vixenbbw Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 Nope, it's exactly the way I found it And I thought I'd read everything going!! I love the 'Love Today' stuff cos it's my fave song due to the sexual references and I haven't heard him speak about it so explicitly before. I just love, love, love the imagery it cunjors up... My fave moment on LICM is the line "walk away" followed by the biggest guitar lick!! Gives me a little shiver every time! Vix x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mika_forever Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 Love the interview, thanks for posting:thumb_yello: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greta Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 Ooooh great interview! T4P!!And FINALLY we know where he's from! We were trying to figure it all out in the Leb. Thread!! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. that was the more interesting part:thumb_yello: so romantic the ancient roamns ruins there...my father went in Lebanon for work when I wasn't still born, he return home a lot of picture and a film..woah dusty-fashioned places:bleh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kinga Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 Great interview! Thanks for posting but the title confused me a lot, at first I thought that they will be comparising Mika to Michael Jackson and give a title the King of Pop Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cubitus Posted October 12, 2007 Share Posted October 12, 2007 Ooooh great interview! T4P!!And FINALLY we know where he's from! We were trying to figure it all out in the Leb. Thread!! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. yeah finally we know where he's from !!! from the south...but where from the south ? the mission is half accomplished kate I still want to know where he's exactely from Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mellody Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 great, thanx! what newspaper/magazine is it from? i like the explicit love today part. naughty boy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkly1 Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 ahah so it was “Girl dresses like a kid for fun, she licks her lips like there's something other" and not "something on them" like some people thought it was lol, why can't he always clear his lyrics up like that for us lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daisylou Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 Strange you guys haven't seen this before as I have.It was a while ago mind. Good to read it again tho isn't it Jodie MARR not Mark? Thanks for the post! xx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrendaLovesMika! Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 Thank Youuuuu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IngievV Posted October 13, 2007 Author Share Posted October 13, 2007 Great interview! Thanks for posting but the title confused me a lot, at first I thought that they will be comparising Mika to Michael Jackson and give a title the King of Pop That was the title of the article as I found it:wink2: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IngievV Posted October 13, 2007 Author Share Posted October 13, 2007 great, thanx! what newspaper/magazine is it from?i like the explicit love today part. naughty boy! It's from an internet site. http://www.amount.com I think it was:blink: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriszti Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 thanks for sharing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luna Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 thanks for posting:thumb_yello: interesting interview... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marianne84 Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 Thanks for posting this. I hadn't read it before. Love Today is my favorite song and I love what he says about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Queenie Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 Thanks for posting!!! Interesting interview! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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