Mika's portrait in the frnch newspaper "Libération"

[mari62]

Thank you Sephira and Mariposa!!

nice and interesting article!!

 

* Tanguy is the main character of a novel and a film

 

The film was such an accurate description of the sociological phenomenon it evocates that

now in French the word Tanguy is the usual term to designate an adult still living with his parents.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanguy_(film))

[mariposa]

Thank you Sephira and Mariposa!!

nice and interesting article!!

 

* Tanguy is the main character of a novel and a film

 

The film was such an accurate description of the sociological phenomenon it evocates that

now in French the word Tanguy is the usual term to designate an adult still living with his parents.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanguy_(film))

 

Ah, now that makes sense!

Thank you!

[laura*]

You don't become dyslexic suddenly, but the simptoms can appear after a traumatic experience (moving, changing schools). And for some reason, in latin speaking countries (as France) dyslexia isn't as common because the language is the same phonetically and in written form. Anyway, that's what I've read but I'm no expert:naughty:

 

You're right. The strange thing is that he can't write French either.

I guess I will take him as he is, asking no further questions. Understanding is impossible apparently.

 

Thank you Sephira and Mariposa!!

nice and interesting article!!

 

* Tanguy is the main character of a novel and a film

 

The film was such an accurate description of the sociological phenomenon it evocates that

now in French the word Tanguy is the usual term to designate an adult still living with his parents.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanguy_(film))

 

 

Yep, and in Italy it's bamboccione.

[Louiza]

Great article!!! t4p

[AnnaMariaPetra]

Thanks very much for the translation Mariposa! Great job!

I translated it with the Google translator to dutch: came out really funny!

 

So he was invited by Sarkozy? Why? I cannot image our PM to invite popstars to dinner, he must have to have better things to do!

[Sabine64]

Thank you for posting and for the translation

[kittie88]

Great translation and great interview, thanks!

[Gracekelly85]

Thanks for posting!

it's interesting!

[Sylvana]

Wow...he is in a relationship...didn't know that haha...

 

Now is the question....is it a boy or a girl

[keti]

You don't become dyslexic suddenly! And normally it shouldn't involve the ability to read music. He may not be really dyslexic after all, his problems may have been caused by his bad experiences.

 

That's what I think too. I don't think he's REALLY dyslexic - if he was he couldn't read so much as he does,if you follow his tweets and interviews - he's just got some periods when this 'dyslexia' comes back to him.

 

 

 

In red my comments.

 

Le grand serein

(no idea about how to translate the title…any ideas?)

 

portrait

 

MIKA. Creativity has helped the new pop star to find a way out of his complicated teenage years.

 

By MATTHEW ECOIFFIER

 

First observation: Mika is very tall – according to his record label he measures 1.92 m (6.3 feet)- and he also has big feet. At the other end of this long well toned body and his - let’s call it Mediterranean - good looks, undulates thick auburn hair whenever his hazel eyes are framed by long lashes. (This sentence is my favourite! ) Just like the cartoons painted on his CD booklets and which can also be found in his songs. 20 h 30. After Mika had made three faces (I guess it is in the sense that Mika was joking/making faces?) the photographer gets angry, takes the singer's beautiful face in his hands. He puts Mika‘s shirt back in his pants held by suspenders/braces. Mika is surprised, but doesn’t do anything (in reaction). He looks rather inquisitive/curious and seems to be happy that the pressure is dropping now. "We sold six million of the previous CD, including 1.4 in France and as many in England, and just about 200 000 in the United States," says his manager who looks like a trader in his thirties. That is the commercial callenge of his second CD with the title: The Boy Who Knew Too Much, "and doesn’t know when to stop," as stated one angry critic being inspired by the falsettos of his three octaves and a half ranging voice as well as by the carousel of references (from Freddie Mercury to George Michael); an opus that is yet based on a fantasy and extraordinary power melodies.

 

Once seated in the back of a bar where he orders a beer as you would usually do in London pubs, he starts putting the hypothesis made about his biography, which had often been changed after he got famous, back in the picture (he corrects them). He told us that when he was a child he was "obsessed by Chantal Goya and her magic forest" and now reinvented as Bécassine’s cousin (What’s that about?). Is it true that he lives in London in the same building as his parents? There he is immediately dressed as a late/retarded (?)Tanguy* surrounded by his three very caring sisters and his little brother Fortune. "I know the film, but it's not my life! I have my own apartment on the mezzanine floor with a kitchen and a washing machine."

 

21h 00. Slowly, the gilded (GOLDEN! ) Parisian palace that he describes as "Rococo" seems to take him over like a “Madeleine mémorielle” (I think this is just a metaphor to explain that something takes you back, you remember sth?). His French is less controlled than his English, because of his childhood. His father, an American financier, and his mother, belonging to the Lebanese bourgeoisie, moved to Paris when he was one year old. It was the golden times of Mika, living in a beautiful apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement (in Paris). It was the times of good grades at school and of the Russian piano teacher who drank too much coffee and bad breath. "There was also a Lebanese priest who used to come to our house every week to have a drink. I was six years old and he had a deal with me. He smoked his pipe, then he put his arm behind the sofa and passed it to me. I loved the taste of honey, like burnt sugar.”During the Gulf War, his father was detained for seven months at the U.S. embassy in Kuwait.

 

The family experienced a reversal of fortune and they find themselves in London. That is where Mika got sacked from the French high school. "It is as if a block had fallen on me. In one year I became dyslexic. Before that, I could read music and I could write. I lost it all.” His mother got him out of school and lets him do what he wants to do provided that he would practice playing the piano for three hours a day. He composed his first songs aged 11. "Super simple and not very good. But I loved testing them on people and see if they would remember them. "

 

For lanky boys, sensitive like him, puberty is the time where you get attacked a lot. "I was totally apart. Not smart enough to be in the club of geeks, not cool, not sporty. And I was rejected because I was not very manly and stout. I’m goofy», he says smiling. Now this "adds to his style” when performing on stage. But in high school, he was insulted because of that. "I had this identity of a sad clown. I began to adopt a destructive behaviour: I went out too often, drank too much, spent time with older people" Except that this time he is musically armed to develop his magic formula: using the power of melodies of counting-out rhymes which make even those people dance who reject him. "We're not what you think, we are made of gold," he sings. Or, at a pinch incestuous "I want to be your brother, your father, your mother and your sister and whatever else that touches you." (The author got this message wrong obviously…nothing incestuous about it IMO. It's about jealousy, right? Being jealous e. g. of your beloved's family...)

 

He was concerned about seeing himself locked up in this imaginary world he has created in his teens. Nor sour, nor sweet. "At Canal+ (French tv channel), they asked me if I will come back as a Teletubby in another life, if I had the Peter Pan syndrome? But this is not at all my character, not at all what I’m doing. Nobody asks this question to Tim Burton. He is a genius, he has this fantasy, he corrects. Before recalling in English, that "the image of a joyful childhood is a pure marketing concept. Mika would rather be an Edward Scissorhands who would have grafted piano keys at his fingertips, than Pee Wee, the man child. (love this image!)

 

With such a CV, the gay magazine Tetu is irritated that Mika refuses to come out of the closet. He says that he is not "a Hollywood actor in the closet. I am very open when it comes to sexuality. Some people tell me: "You're afraid of the commercial consequences." “But they did not listen to my tracks!" He's got a face to make you fall on your knees," he sings in Blame it on the Girls ... Having overcome their simplistic violence, he does not see why he should label himself. But others are free to do so: "I don’t hide anything that is part of my life, I am not ashamed of anything. Am I in a relationship right now? Yeah. But I protect it.” Le Figaro pictures him as "a cross between the devil and the perfect son-in-law who is capable of having a good conversation." (lol) This is contradicted by the fact that he declined to have dinner at the Elysée Palace with Nicolas Sarkozy and the Lebanese President: "If I was a fan, andwere inspired by what Sarkozy says, I would have returned from LA." He finds it however “super interesting” to see what Frédéric Mitterrand will be doing whom he watched in Etoiles et toiles (Stars and paintings) (What is this btw?) at the Ministry of Culture. Mika sees himself as "apolitical" but "culturally left. But above all, my opinion doesn’t count. Should I ask Sarkozy to visit him to play the piano or ask his opinion on my music?". Nevertheless he goes the polls. And has nothing of a young ethereal pop star. Passing three days in Paris, he seems to be (plus affûté) sharper (?) on the Hadopi laws (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law ) as Juliette Greco and Pierre Arditi: "This Hadopi law voted upon yesterday scares me. It’s an infringement of freedom.”He defends streaming (subscription to listen to songs online without downloading) and predicts "a battle between artists and record labels" for the distribution of royalties.

 

22 h 00. The time to have dinner. His mother, appears beautiful and imposing at the end of the corridor. Tomorrow, Mika has a day off. He will go for a walk in the streets of Paris, "probably alone". "I’m walking/Going on, that's the only thing that has helped me in my life."

 

Photo Samuel Kirszenbaum

 

In 5 dates

 

August 18, 1983

Birth of Michael Penniman in Beirut (Lebanon).

 

2006

Release of his first digital single Relax, Take it Easy in Great Britain

 

2007

Including the hit single Grace Kelly, Life in Cartoon Motion becomes the best selling album of the year in France.

 

2008

Concert at the Parc des Princes in front of more than 55 000 people.

 

Septembre 2009

Release of The Boy That Knew Too Much, album written and composed in London and Paris and recorded in LA like the previous one.

 

* Tanguy is the main character of a novel and a film

The film was such an accurate description of the sociological phenomenon it evocates that

now in French the word Tanguy is the usual term to designate an adult still living with his parents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanguy_(film))

 

I think it's a really interesting article. I like interviews that cover a bit more than the usual thigs we would read/hear in any interview.

 

Ok, so if you have any remarks on how to correct this English version, please pm me. Will edit the post then first thing in the morning.

 

Thank you so much,Mariposa!! This must've been a rather hard job,translating all of that.

Love this article:thumb_yello:

[crazyaboutmika]

Thanks! That article is really interesting! Excellent work!

[Mika Freaka =)]

Wow, that was very interesting, thank you

 

I guess theres always more to him:wub2:

[RAK1]

That's what I think too. I don't think he's REALLY dyslexic - if he was he couldn't read so much as he does,if you follow his tweets and interviews - he's just got some periods when this 'dyslexia' comes back to him.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you so much,Mariposa!! This must've been a rather hard job,translating all of that.

Love this article:thumb_yello:

I have a friend who's dyslexic, and she can write to a point, but has to go back over what she's written, to make sure it's correct. Looking at Mikas tweets, it's clear that he is dyslexic, as he doesn't correct any spelling mistakes, probably because he's writing in a hurry.

[robertina]

thanks for posting! nice article...i adimire his mother a lot, she could deal with a rioting adolescent in the best way, the results are pretty acceptable

[CazGirl]

I have a friend who's dyslexic, and she can write to a point, but has to go back over what she's written, to make sure it's correct. Looking at Mikas tweets, it's clear that he is dyslexic, as he doesn't correct any spelling mistakes, probably because he's writing in a hurry.

 

Unless I'm correcting them for him LOL!

 

Bombfire indeed.

[DarkLight]

Oooooh he's in a relationship?

 

 

shocked??? i'm shocked you didn't know!!

 

whoever it is is one hell of a jammy devil i'll say!!! if I find out by feb (when I see Mika) that he's no longer dating anyone I'm prepared to pounce lol I wouldn't mind being Mika's girl ohhhh:wub2:

 

 

thanks for posting! nice article...i adimire his mother a lot, she could deal with a rioting adolescent in the best way, the results are pretty acceptable

 

yes indeed he's turned out quite nicely hasn't he:wub2:

 

Unless I'm correcting them for him LOL!

 

Bombfire indeed.

 

lmfao ohh yes I remember the bomfire thing it made me howl with laughter by far one of the best tweets/typos of the year so far I'd give him an award & all that if I had one spare lol

Edited December 5, 2009 by DarkLight
typo