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Mika in a Taxi - You Magazine - 28/02/2010

Rubytuesday

By Rubytuesday
in Mika News and Press

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Rubytuesday

Rubytuesday

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Behind the flamboyance of the 'clown prince of pop' lies a more sensitive soul

 

article-1253240-08237924000005DC-732_468x359.jpg

'In a taxi with... pop singer Mika' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1253240/Mika-taxi.html

 

some interesting quotes in this article, most notably (in my opinion anyway!:biggrin2:)

 

'We can all be masculine and feminine and fall in love with whoever. I live an open and free life and reject labels,’ says Mika, who is currently single and about to buy his first house in Central London so that he can move out of the basement of his family’s home in Kensington'

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Blue Sky

Blue Sky

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I think I was trying to add the pic to the first post while you were too Rubytuesday, sorry!

 

TEXT:

 

At first I’m wondering whether music’s most extravagant showman can even fit into the taxi, since the beautiful, flamingo-legged Mika is 6ft 4in tall – or 6ft 8in if you count his wild halo of curly dark hair. He’s a proper pop star with all the trimmings, including an Isadora Duncan-style turquoise scarf that almost threatens to throttle him when we stop for photos in a biting night wind. No wonder our cabbie, Harry from Benfleet in Essex, can’t wait to phone his daughter, a huge fan of Mika and his music.

 

The half-Lebanese star (real name Michael Penniman) was born in Beirut but moved to Paris after his American businessman father had been held hostage in Kuwait’s US embassy for six months in 1990 during the Iraqi invasion. A year later the family, dogged by what Mika describes as ‘financial difficulties that lost us everything’, relocated to a London boarding house when Mika was eight.

‘My dad got a job and we rebuilt our lives after a few years of struggling,’ says Mika, who was a reclusive child in what he calls an ‘eccentric, bohemian family’ with three sisters and a brother.

 

At ten, Mika began writing songs despite the dyslexia that means he still can’t read music. At 12, he was singing jingles on TV commercials, got picked for the chorus in a David Hockney-designed Strauss production at the Royal Opera House and had his demo tapes turned down by no less than Simon Cowell (‘I kept blagging my way into record producers’ offices without telling my parents. Simon said that he liked my voice but not my songs – so I went away and wrote better ones’).

 

‘Simon Cowell said that he liked my voice but not my songs – so I went away and wrote better ones’

 

 

Eventually Mika was signed up in 2005 by Mariah Carey’s producer ex Tommy Mottola, while studying at the Royal College of Music. His 2007 debut album, Life In Cartoon Motion, sold more than five million copies, while his second album, The Boy Who Knew Too Much, reached number four in the UK. Yet Mika, 26, admits with disarming honesty: ‘I still feel like a rookie. I have so much to prove – which adds a lot of pressure.’

There’s a thoughtful intensity about Mika in person that’s very different from the gaudy public image of the so-called ‘clown prince of pop’. His falsetto whoops on his catchy hits have won him Ivor Novello and Brit awards and got him compared to Freddie Mercury (‘It’s a compliment but I’m very different – even though I referenced him in “Grace Kelly” because he was so incredible’).

 

Yet despite the melodic sweetness and bouncy beat that get him so much airplay, there’s often a sting in Mika’s barbed lyrics – as in ‘Lollipop’, a cautionary tale about a girl who sleeps with so many men that she gets her heart broken. ‘I write Gothic fairy tales – it’s that Tim Burton thing,’ he explains.

 

And what’s not to love about the boy who bigs up larger ladies with the song ‘Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)’? As for the androgyny that fascinates his fans, he refuses to have his sexuality pinned down. ‘We can all be masculine and feminine and fall in love with whoever. I live an open and free life and reject labels,’ says Mika, who is currently single and about to buy his first house in Central London so that he can move out of the basement of his family’s home in Kensington.

 

‘I’m the product of the family I came from, which is resilient and joyfully dysfunctional, but I don’t want to live too close to them,’ says Mika, whose sisters and mother helped design his stage look in the early days to save money.

 

We stop for a drink at his favourite pub, the Grenadier in Belgravia, where I ask this self-styled ‘natural bandmaster’ how he paces himself on tour. ‘There’s always a bit of excess or you aren’t human,’ he says.

 

‘You have to get wasted in different ways – it reminds you of what being sober is. But am I an attention-seeking prat in everyday life? Absolutely not. I never set myself up as a role model for anything, apart from the freedom to do whatever you want. I don’t come from a scene, a sound or a fashion – so I can go wherever I want to go.’

 

Mika’s album The Boy Who Knew Too Much is out now. To book tickets for his current UK tour, go to seetickets.com

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1253240/Mika-taxi.html#ixzz0gqASbrDP

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MissPie

MissPie

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Nice article, thanks for posting! That's a good picture as well :wub2:

I like that they point out this "thoughtful intensity", not only going "oh he has those poppy melodies" and all that...

 

"You have to get wasted in different ways - it reminds you of what being sober is." Interesting view :naughty:

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