California Chronicle - Mika: Back in Motion

Cassiopée · August 28, 2009

I'm not able to access the page atm but I received this from google news an hour ago: http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/134654973

I hope it's good! Gotta leave for work now :wink2:

Mika: Back in Motion

August 29, 2009

By Stephen Jones

Two years after exploding onto the music scene with the multi- million-selling debut album Life In Cartoon Motion, Mika is back with an altogether darker set of songs, and a belief that, this time round, anything is possible

By Stephen Jones

When mika bounded onto the music scene in 2007 the Freddie Mercury comparisons came thick and fast. Those comparisons seemed partly justified when his debut album Life In Cartoon Motion sold more than 5.5m copies worldwide.

And now with his second album ready to roll, there is serious talk among Universal executives that they have an artist on their hands with all the hallmarks of becoming one of the greats.

Universal Music Group International chairman and chief executive Lucian Grainge - who signed Mika in a joint deal with Casablanca Records - says, "Mika's a complete one-off. When you look back at Prince and George Michael they were one offs, and it takes a degree of reflection and hindsight but I suspect he's that kind of artist. These people are incredible songwriters who construct and hone great songs and then turn them into great records, and that's what we have here."

Music Week caught up with the Ivor Novello-winning songwriter Mika Penniman in his Kensington home to talk about his career to date and the run-up to new album The Boy Who Knew Too Much.

At what point during the success of your debut album did your thoughts turn to making your second?

I had started thinking what I needed to do to take myself forward before I had even finished the first album. As that was saturated with songs which dealt with childhood and dealt with this nursery rhyme approach to music, it dawned on me the next thing I should do should be an extension of that - fairytales. But gothic fairytales, bringing out the violence and danger of the nursery rhymes.

Were you intimidated by your own success?

At first, yes. But it wasn't really the radio play that got me into a muddle, it's just that my old songs weren't mine any more. People were singing my songs back at me at a show and I felt quite resentful that my songs had been taken away from me. Writing songs is a very selfish act and I had to get myself into another mindset so I stopped working at home, which is a big shift for me, and put myself in the studio [in Los Angeles] and treated it like I was going to work. Every day I would go there at 11am and had a very rigid pattern.

Like they do in Nashville?

Exactly. I said to myself I am going to pretend I am like one of those workers in the Brill Building [in New York] and I'm going to gravitate towards writing the song and take it as a challenge; once I got myself into that headspace it really helped. It felt like I was writing a soundtrack to a movie about my teenage years. I always wanted to do that. I always felt embarrassed that you should approach writing pop music like that because it's all about the art, but when you are under pressure it is very hard to see the wood for the trees. I had tea with Pete Townsend and [his partner] Rachel Fuller just as I was about to start making the album and Townsend looks at me and says, 'You're nervous aren't you.' I tried to deny it but I couldn't. He said, 'All you have to think of now is: rely on your art and the craft will come,' and you know what? It really helped.

Every recording artist would love to have the creative control you have. Is it easy to get?

It was hard in a way. I really isolated myself for about a year. I was on my own with the few people I was working with. My friends didn't know where I was, my family didn't know where I was. And to the record company I wasn't sending stuff out to get second opinions. I lived in a bubble and it took a bit of discipline. I'm not going to turn to a million people because then I will get confused. At least if I am dancing blind, then I won't stop dancing.

Collaborations of note on this record include songwriter/ producer Imogen Heap, producer Stuart Price (Madonna, The Killers), violinist Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire, The Last Shadow Puppets) and The Seawind Horns (Michael Jackson). But the record is largely produced by Greg Wells again - did you consider working with anyone else?

I went back to Greg because he's the one producer that enabled me to translate what I had in my head onto a record. He's like a musical Swiss Army knife. We both have this fear of fashion and we have this world where we can reference everything from a Cornelius record for inspiration right through to a Patti Page record, it doesn't matter.

Your songs always seem to conjour a multitude of visual references - is that a conscious pursuit?

I think it's because I work from images. My song book is mostly cut-outs of things I have seen or like. With this album there was a lot of very violent photography from the Eighties and, at the same time, children's illustrations from the Fifties which I became obsessed with to the point where I have become penpals with the people who wrote those books. The inspiration is very visual because I am technically very limited. I can't read music.

How has the business changed for artists in the last few years?

I've seen this massive 'destructuring' [sic] of things happening and there are a lot of benefits. There are no rules really. And when you have a more cowboy attitude, people take risks because they have got to; they have got to change, do more interesting things and they have got to support you in different ways. It's not just about selling records but it's about building a career. But it is tough: I look at the session musicians in LA and the studios shutting down and the old school way of making records has changed, but people are still spending money.

How big an artist do you want to be?

I just want to keep what I am doing in an industry that is decreasing in size by 15-20% a year. I want to keep going. When I started the whole emphasis was on the show and on translating everything live. Even when I was playing to 10 people in a tiny upstairs room at the Birmingham Bar Academy, we still put on a full show; with the theatrical element in there, with a hint of Tommy in it. That's really important to me. I want my shows to do well. That's my biggest ambition. And I want my songs to have a chance.

How do you think the public perceive you as an artist?

Um, well. I,.... dunno. I think, er,.... I think,.... I,... I don't know."

You don't think about it?

I never think about it. I can't. It's like reading magazines. I don't. It's like watching music television - I don't. It puts you in a competitive mind set. I don't think about things like that. All I do know is that there are some people who get what (previous single) Lollipop is about and there's other people who don't know and there are some who just don't like what I do and that doesn't matter. There's some people who get the darkness in Lollipop and in this record there's a little bit more dark and the contrast between lyrical content and the kind of confident self-questioning in the lyrics and just draw from it and embrace it and the pop music it's paired with."

Edited August 28, 2009 by guylainem123
article added to first post

happikali · August 28, 2009

It won't load for me atm ... but thanks for posting ! :thumb_yello: :wub2:

mari62 · August 28, 2009

won't load for me either.... will try later thanks

Cassiopée · August 28, 2009

Sorry, it's still not working.... the whole California Chronicle site seems down...

willywonka · August 28, 2009