Interview with Time Out Shanghai, May 6, 2015

[mellody]

http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Music-Music_features/27109/Extended-interview-Mika.html

 

pretty long interview, i find it especially interesting what he has to say about style and his collaboration with valentino!

Edited May 8, 2015 by mellody

[DongDong]

T4P,Mellody!  

[cathouzouf]

Very interesting!

 

Thanks Mellody

[Marilyn Mastin]

That's a great interview! T4P

[SjoerdvWijk]

Thank you!

[*Vv*]

Really interesting! Thanks for posting!

[Christine]

Oh Mika, Valentino reeks so bad of perfume it made my eyes sting and gave me a migraine to be in such close proximity to the suit and Pierpaolo. The pretentiousness of those suits makes the Louboutins look like a pair of Converse.

 

Interesting that he finally admitted his mother is American. Only took 9 years

[Pascale]

The pretentiousness of those suits makes the Louboutins look like a pair of Converse.

 

Interesting that he finally admitted his mother is American. Only took 9 years

Well to be honest I often find Mika a bit pretentious himself (in a cute way). So it sort of fits the suits and shoes then.

 

And oh my God, do you mean he's not really half lebanese? But he is still born in Beirut isn't he?

Edited May 9, 2015 by Pascale

[crazyaboutmika]

Great interview

Thanks a lot Mellody

[dcdeb]

Well to be honest I often find Mika a bit pretentious himself (in a cute way). So it sort of fits the suits and shoes then.

 

And oh my God, do you mean he's not really half lebanese? But he is still born in Beirut isn't he?

 

Of course he's Lebanese. It's just that for some reason he's always identified his mother as Lebanese, when in fact she was born in the United States. She's of Lebanese descent, but she's a US citizen, as far as I can tell.

[Pascale]

Of course he's Lebanese. It's just that for some reason he's always identified his mother as Lebanese, when in fact she was born in the United States. She's of Lebanese descent, but she's a US citizen, as far as I can tell.

Sorry Deb, i was just joking. I'm afraid I've had an overdosis Mika interviews because the last 5 months I've tried to catch up with 8 years of his career. I abolutely need to kick the habit of reading and watching everything on the internet that concerns him. I still love it and i'm still finding new things but it's not very healthy (i'm getting eye and concentration problems) and there's too much repetition now. That's completely my own doing so I shouldn't bore you with silly jokes.

 

Actually I liked this interview very much. It has been a nice last cigarette. I' m going into detox for two weeks now (joking again) and I will try to develop some of my own creativity instead of experiencing it through the life of someone else. Hope i will be strong enough not to visit MFC for that period and most of all that I will be able to return afterwards and enjoy an occasional sip of information about this lovely man without getting addicted again.

 

Thanks everyone, it has been great to meet you. Hope to see you again soon.

[Christine]

Sorry Deb, i was just joking. I'm afraid I've had an overdosis Mika interviews because the last 5 months I've tried to catch up with 8 years of his career. I abolutely need to kick the habit of reading and watching everything on the internet that concerns him. I still love it and i'm still finding new things but it's not very healthy (i'm getting eye and concentration problems) and there's too much repetition now.

 

The other problem with watching too many interviews is that Mika is a very unreliable source of information about Mika. For example it takes him 9 years to finally say in no uncertain terms that his mother is American-born. I am afraid that trying to discover real info about Mika is even more addicting and much worse for eye and concentration problems, however, so I would not recommend it.

[Alyara]

There's this one thing I'm still wondering though: where was he born? I don't think he ever mentioned that

[Christine]

There's this one thing I'm still wondering though: where was he born? I don't think he ever mentioned that

 

Kansas? Manchester? I still can't figure it out. 

[guylainem123]

The other problem with watching too many interviews is that Mika is a very unreliable source of information about Mika. For example it takes him 9 years to finally say in no uncertain terms that his mother is American-born. I am afraid that trying to discover real info about Mika is even more addicting and much worse for eye and concentration problems, however, so I would not recommend it.

how long did it take him to say in no uncertain terms that his legal name was not Mika? i remember threads about that 

[Christine]

how long did it take him to say in no uncertain terms that his legal name was not Mika? i remember threads about that 

 

It was at least a year or two I remember early interviews he would never even mention his surname at all. I think he thought he could build this Michael Jackson type mystique around him and avoid any direct answers about his sexuality but times have changed so much. That is not going to fly in pop music these days. If you are too coy your music is going to get buried along with facts about your life and no one is going to listen.

[Marilyn Mastin]

It was at least a year or two I remember early interviews he would never even mention his surname at all. I think he thought he could build this Michael Jackson type mystique around him and avoid any direct answers about his sexuality but times have changed so much. That is not going to fly in pop music these days. If you are too coy your music is going to get buried along with facts about your life and no one is going to listen.

I agree. I'm really happy he feels ready to be more open. I think a lot of the negativity he experienced in 2007, was because he wasn't open. It shouldn't have mattered, but it did. I think, being more open is going to stop them focussing on his sexuality and other aspects of his personal life, and make them focus more on his music.

[Alyara]

It was at least a year or two I remember early interviews he would never even mention his surname at all. I think he thought he could build this Michael Jackson type mystique around him and avoid any direct answers about his sexuality but times have changed so much. That is not going to fly in pop music these days. If you are too coy your music is going to get buried along with facts about your life and no one is going to listen.

Now that you've mentioned MJ, he loved f**king around with the press as well and we all know how that turned against him, therefore I really hope Mika won't follow in his footsteps in this regard

[mamiam]

http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Music-Music_features/27109/Extended-interview-Mika.html

pretty long interview, i find it especially interesting what he has to say about style and his collaboration with valentino!

Thank you Karin - long and interesting interview! - Nobody answers questions with so much info and explanations as MIKA - he must be a dream to interview -

 

Love,love

me

[mellody]

Oh Mika, Valentino reeks so bad of perfume it made my eyes sting and gave me a migraine to be in such close proximity to the suit and Pierpaolo. The pretentiousness of those suits makes the Louboutins look like a pair of Converse.

hm, interesting... i have no sense for fashion really, wouldn't know a valentino suit from one his mum made. actually i quite like several (tho not all!) of those valentino suits he wears. but i like them for red carpet events. or on stage for something like the osm gigs. but not for a club gig. no matter if it's a suit by valentino or by his mum or if he bought it at primark - a suit with a tie is just not what i like to see at a (regular) mika gig. tho maybe i'd forget it if i was there live, but on the pix/vids it just bothers me.

 

anyway, i love what he says about this combination of smartness and childishness, generally, not (only) in the sense of fashion. i agree with him that it's this mix that makes a creation special.

[Kumazzz]

http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Music-Music_features/27109/Extended-interview-Mika.html

 

pretty long interview, i find it especially interesting what he has to say about style and his collaboration with valentino!

 

Thanks a lot for posting !!

 

Very interesting interview, I'd like to copy & paste it to here.

 

 

 

http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Music-Music_features/27109/Extended-interview-Mika.html

Extended interview: Mika

Published on 6 May 2015

As Lebanese-British pop star Mika prepares to headline the West Lake Music Festival in Hangzhou, he talks to Time Out about his forthcoming album, the essence of pop and his multi-culturalism

 

You recently announced that you'll be releasing your fourth album, No Place in Heaven, this coming June. Can you talk a little bit about what this album will sound like, and what the process has been like putting it together?

 

It was a very intense process. I was working out of a large expensive studio and I realised that it wasn’t necessary, being in studios like that the whole process of trying to create something really intimate in such a big setting just didn’t make sense.

So I left the studio, cleared all my sessions, went to the MAC store and bought myself a computer and a soundboard and we rented a piano.

We set up a studio in the living room of the house I was renting and even though it was slightly noisy, which was the only disadvantage, the advantage was that I just created a record and brought all the songwriters that I wanted to work with into this house, and we wrote and recorded most of the album there. I know that a lot of people are doing this now and it just changed everything, because it felt literally homemade.

 

And then it got finished in a bigger studios and it’s made where you can start something in the intimacy of a living room, and then finish it with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, or mixing it with an uber mix or whatever and it’s just the right way round. Because you forget about why you’re writing, you just write because you’re having fun in your living room.

And it sounds like that actually – the sound is very limited, I wanted the palette to be quite restricted, and with every song you can understand what the ingredients of the song are, which was actually a lot harder to achieve than I thought it would be because I started with piano and then I put tons and tons of instruments on it, and then in the last phase, took half of it away in order just to leave it as pure as it possibly could be.

 

So it sounds most like probably my first album because this is now my fourth, and I wanted it to absolutely feel like it could have been done ten years ago, or it could be done in ten years time.

And all of that was really in the choices of how things would be produced and how my voice would be captured.

So I really wanted to have that kind of timeless songwriting pop feel, so it sounds like a songwriter’s album, but it’s pop music, and it’s staying melodic.

 

 

Were there any particular artists who influenced you while you were making this record?

 

Not really.... You know there are some albums where you’re really influenced by a certain wave of something that’s going on, and as far as contemporary artists there’s not that much hat was really inspiring me or that I wanted to fit in with a certain sound. If anything, it’s the opposite – I didn’t want to fit in with the sounds around me. I wanted to do something kind of from another time. I don’t know exactly when, but to kind of give it that feeling.

So in that regard, yeah probably early Elton John records that were made actually in kind of a similar way. They went to this place called The Castle in France, and they recorded they would write in the morning and record in the afternoon, just tons of stuff and they would do it without thinking and I think that’s why the songs have this sense of urgency about them when you listen to early albums, and that was the Yellow Brick Road for example, that’s how that album was made.

 

I think that the idea of credible really kind of unaffected and uncalculated songwriter music that is also really melodic and pop at its core, the temperature is kind of turned up because that’s what pop is – pop music is music that’s not afraid to put its heart on its sleeve, it’s not afraid to be melodic, it’s not afraid to use colour the way that it wants to. But combining that with that kind of credible, almost indie songwriting thing, that was the most important mix for me.

 

 

Your last album was called The Origin of Love, which is a pretty big and lofty theme to take on. Were there any love songs or albums that you looked to when you were writing that record either for inspiration or you were just like that’s a great love song.

 

Yeah [laughs], tons. I mean, often the saddest most miserable records are the most effective love songs.

And I agree with you, it is a big lofty theme, but if anything it’s actually, it’s also there’s a duality to something like that because it’s also a tiny thing, there’s you know the thing about it is it’s really an intimate subject at the end of the day and it really happens it’s a tiny thing that has enormous consequences if you know what I mean. If anything the subject matter is really miniscule and really intimate, and as long as we’re willing to kind of get in there and share our perspective on it, it’s quite easy to talk about.

 

But in terms of reference songs… there’s um… oh gosh. Let me think.

Well you could probably take anything from the Carole King Tapestry album, that’s probably one of the best pop romantic singer-songwriter albums ever made. Um…

 

 

Or not even necessarily something that inspired you, but love songs that you love?

 

Okay, um… let me think.

Alright, Bronski Beat, 'Smalltown Boy'. I know it doesn’t seem like a love song, but it is. Prince, 'Purple Rain'. Rufus Wainwright, 'My Phone’s On Vibrate' or 'Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk', which is genius.

Yaz, 'Only You' [giggles], that’s also a guilty pleasure.

What else… Harry Nilsson, 'Without Her'.

Oh! And – yeah, no. That’s a good selection. Strange…

 

 

Your singing voice has these great David Bowie-esque, Freddy Mercury-like glam elements to it – which isn’t something that you necessarily see a lot of in contemporary pop music. How did you develop that singing style?

 

I know! Completely by accident [laughs].

Well, I think it all came from the fact that I'm not a very good piano player.

And so when I wanted to tell a story, you know my piano playing is very simplistic – effective, but simplistic – and so when I wanted to tell a story, I’d do it by using my voice to tell the story. And also I think it’s the influence of classical music, so I started classical music when I was 11-years-old, that’s when I got my first job.

And I worked a lot in classical repertoire and also contemporary music, and it was quite an intense training that I had to endure from the age of nine onwards, but you know in classical music you’re constantly trying to expand your range, and your constantly developing the technique in order to sustain your voice, your range.

And so when it came to sitting down and singing a pop song I certainly wasn’t stuck within an octave-and-a-half of vocal range.

 

Also I think that the type of stories that I wanted to tell, I had to… I found that it was very easy to be fearless in the way that I used my voice.

I think most people who sing have a lot more in their voice than they use, it’s not about physically being able to do it, it’s about daring to sing like that or daring to figure out how to. It takes a certain kind of you have to really go for it, you can’t dip your pinky in, if you’re going to sing like that you have to physically hold up, your music has to match, the storylines of the songs need to match, otherwise it just feels affected and insincere and weird. It can’t feel weird – a singer has to be reassuring, that’s the most amazing thing that I’ve learned.

 

The audience is really smart, the audience is really intelligent and they know when something is credible, they know when something is real, and they know when it’s art, if that makes sense.

But it’s not that they’re kind of musicologists or that they’re all music critics, it’s just that they can tell when they’re being reassured, when they feel at ease, and when something’s off – when something’s not sincere.

Sincerity or at least the idea of credibility is something that the audience can really feel, right away. And that’s the thing that’s the litmus test for it.

 

 

 

And you said that you were doing a job as a child – was that right or was it just training?

 

Yeah I was working and I started training really hard instead of going to school for about seven months.

And within seven months, I was at the Royal Opera House, my first gig was a Strauss opera, and then it just went on from there.

Once I got one gig it led to another one and another one, and then one thing led to another.

Suddenly my life kind of turned around – I was a kid in school, and then six months later I was a kid at school, but at the same time a grown-up with a job in one way.

 

I think that was really quite formative, because it kind of gave me from that point onwards I knew what I was going to do with my life.

Because on one side I was at school, and I was feeling like nothing and I hated it, and I had such a hard time, and on the other side I would go and work with a bunch of adults who it was like the grownup world and it was good, and people treated me really nice.

And I was like why do I get treated like crap in school by a bunch of kids and teachers, and when I got to work with a bunch of adults and I’m treated really nicely.

It was like, the choice has been made for me, only an idiot wouldn’t see which side was the better one to be on.

 

 

You come from a very varied background; culturally and geographically you lived in all these places before you got to London. Did you feel like an outsider when you moved to London and do you think that helped steer you in the direction of becoming an artist?

 

Well yeah, but it’s less romantic than that. 100 percent yes, you’re right, but it’s not as romantic as the picture you’ve painted.

I think it’s really about being – I’m not a gypsy, but at the same time we are different layers of immigrant, like my mother’s first-generation American, her parents were both immigrants, and then she went away and became an immigrant herself to another three other countries and she had us during that time.

And then we moved around. So if anything, when you don’t feel like you belong, as you said, 100 percent to the place where you’re growing up, it really pushes you toward finding your identity in another way, so I wouldn’t say it was an escape because really most of my training as a kid musically happened when I was a child, from the age of eight to 20, that was the most intense period. And that was just crazy discipline – it was just my Scottish teacher and my Russian teacher and it was just like erggh, and I didn’t want to do it. So if anything it wasn’t an escape, if anything I wanted to escape from them, quite frankly [laughs].

 

But that thing about trying to find your own identity, having to justify your presence, which is a little bit of a cruel thing to admit, but it’s true – justifying your presence, building your own world since the world around you is not yours and neither will it ever be, and you feel like that’s being made clear to you almost every single day in one way or another, and so you go for it.

You struggle and you fight like a maniac and you develop skills in areas in order to one day be able to build your own world that you can take with you and then it’s your kind of ticket, your freedom card. I think that is how I approached it.

And then eventually I was able to use it as a source of escape, but I think that that was the first thing that happened. It’s no coincidence that especially in classical music or sports, you do have people from a lot of varied backgrounds with mixed ethnicities and with parents from different countries going really heavily into trying to develop those skills. That’s why.

 

 

And so now that you’ve gotten older, do you find that all of those elements of your background have come together in a way that influences the way that you create? Because you have the UK, you lived in France as a child, your mother is Lebanese-American, and your dad is also American, so do all of those pieces have a presence in your creative life?

 

Um, perhaps. And also you know my lifestyle – I live in the UK but I work in France and Italy and everywhere, but I also do TV shows in three different languages…

 

 

You’re fluent also in French and Italian right?

 

Yeah, and I do the Voice of France and X Factor, but I learned Italian for the show I didn’t speak it before – I learned it in two months.

It was fun.

But, in a way I think what you’re asking me is have I fixed that problem of placelessness. And the answer is never – impossible.

No. I never will. But I don’t want to – I’ve realised this: it's my biggest asset, because it means that I’m never bored. I never get complacent, I’m never jaded.

If anything, it gives me the ability to find inspiration wherever I want, to push myself into different scenarios.

 

For example, let’s use China as an example – every single time we had a holiday as a kid, my mother would take us to interesting places and whenever we had money to go on holiday we never went to a beach, I’ve never been on a beach with my family in my life. Just recently I did it for the first time, but we never had those kinds of trips.

And for example China, I’ve been eight times to Mainland China and we were always pushed to kind of explore, because we don’t have that village that we come from, we don’t have that place where we’re supposed to belong, we’re always kind of traveling or throwing ourselves into different experiences, whether it’s professionally or just kind of as tourists.

 

I remember the first time I went to Beijing was I believe in 1996, and so I’ve seen the progression of what’s happened in that city on and off since then, and it’s just incredible to as a person be able to witness change like that.

And I’ve always thrown myself into things like, Italian X-Factor, learning it in two months, and then people are like you’re crazy, why?

And I’m like, why not?

But you don’t speak the language and I’m like, so what? I can’t even spell in English anyway, so what difference does it make?

And the Voice of France and touring incessantly, it’s just like, if anything that placelessness has been my freedom card. My identity is formed as a result of not having anything to kind of pin me down, except for my music.

 

But I don’t have issues with it. I guess part of what you’re asking is if I have issues with it.

Other friends of mine who speak with funny accents, when you’re growing up and you’re mixed backgrounds and everything, my other friends might have a real issue with it and are always trying to deny – or they’re always trying to say that they belong to one specific place, but it’s not true and I look at them and am like, you’re just like me, you’re just trying to pretend.

I don’t have that problem, and I think it’s because I make music.

 

 

Do your parents still live in the UK?

 

Yes, except my dad also lives in the Middle East.

 

 

So since both of your parents speak with an American accent, right?

 

Yeah, terrible ones though, really strange American accents.

My dad lived in America a total of four years of his life.

He’s from there, but his father worked as a diplomat, so he was everywhere.

 

 

So when you go to the US do you talk with an American accent, like one of those people who’s bi-dialectical?

 

Yeah, if anything, I mimic the person who I’m sitting in front of.

So the amount of times I’ve had some half-drunk Irish person want to smash me in the face because they think I’m taking the piss, but the truth is, it’s a reflex, I mirror accents in front of me.

And yeah, there’s a term for it but I don’t know what it is.

So if I’m happy, it’s really strange, because if I’m in a good mood I copy the accents around me.

If I don’t like it, if I’m in a bad mood, I exaggerate the opposite.

 

So for example if I’m in Los Angeles, because I get really sad in that city when I go out because it’s just a constant stampede, one person over another, to be a movie star and you really feel it in the air and the way people talk to one another, so I get really angry and my English accent kind of gets really magnified and exaggerated.

Whereas if I’m in New York and I’m really happy and hanging around, I just speak like everyone else. [laughs]

 

 

Your look is often quite different from photo to photo. Do you think about your style a lot...

 

No, that’s why I’m so inconsistent!

 

 

So is this all just an accident? Do you have style icons or who you take cues from?

 

No, I do, and style is important.

For me, everything is about the creative process, more than the kind of aesthetic ambition.

So instead of saying ‘I want to look like this,’ I say, ‘Those people are really interesting, I want to work with them, and I want to have fun with them’ and then the way I look will just end up being the result of that collaboration.

 

So for example, I love and I work with my mother in this regard, my mother started showing me everything that the new Valentino team, these two designers called Pierpaolo and Maria Grazia, and they took over Valentino and they’re really like a little bit alternative for high fashion.

They’re really playful, they’re best friends, they’ve worked together for their entire careers, they’re good people, they’re fun, they’re extremely intellectual as well as being extremely fun.

They have that lightness of touch, which is quite a magical thing, and they have none of that kind of false pretence that you can get in fashion.

They don’t stink of a perfume bottle is the way I like to say it. It’s not all about selling perfume.

 

 

For them, it’s really about telling stories, so we developed this entire thing, and for the last few years I wear Valentino, and I wear Valentino Couture, and it’s men’s couture, which doesn’t exist.

I think I’m the only person in the world who has Valentino Couture, and we tell stories with the clothes, we talk about things kind of you know painting movement, aesthetic movement from the fifties and from the forties to Cocteau designs to Fortunado Depero, and all these people and it finds its way into the clothes, and that finds its way into the album cover, which I designed with my sister, and that finds its way into my set designs.

 

So if anything, style for me is something that’s really living – it’s storytelling, and if I have in terms of icons, and the same thing happened by the way with Christian Louboutin, he never made men’s shoes.

My sister and my mum contacted him, we started having a very similar collaboration, we formed a men’s sneaker, which was designed for me to dance in, and all the different stages of that, and eventually that became an enormous thing that he now has as part of his main collection.

 

But it started off as just fun between a bunch of people trying to do something cool, and the result is style.

But it’s really not, and that’s fine if that’s the end product, but the beginning was just having fun and telling a story.

But in terms of style icons, for me the most important people in style are what in French you call the enfant terrible, the terrible children.

So, Schiaparelli, John Cocteau, Picasso – those people were the terrible children, and Hemingway.

 

I mean all these people who were part of the same clan in Europe at the same time, and they revolutionised the style industry from music to art to fashion, and I think that little kind of devilish playful quality, that combination of being really intellectual or wised-up, being quite well researched, but also very naive at the same time, candid and playful, that is when magic things can happen.

Without that combination, it’s just either childish infantile, or lofty and intellectual and boring.

So that’s style to me, and it permeates everything.

Once you take that perspective on style, it finds its way into music and art, into everything, and I think that’s how style should be kind of considered.

Because then sth good as opposed to something just about selling perfume.

 

 

You've said in previous interviews that another songwriter once told you that in order to be successful, you have to dare to suck – which…

 

Yeah, Desmond Child told me that.

 

 

Is that idea of sucking something that stops people in their creative process? They think is a great idea in their head, but they’re just so afraid of it not living up to their expectations...

 

Yeah, but the thing is, by confronting that fear you may fail, but the next time you do it, you’ll probably do a lot better.

But I think it’s because they don’t have collaborators with tolerance, if that makes sense.

So for example I work with my family because they’re tolerant collaborators.

So it’s not always about – you know, so often, all of us work with people who really only care about whether something’s going to be successful or not.

So that they can make money out of it or deliver in time, but when you work with family and friends they’re tolerant, if it fails they want to do it again, or they can see the good in it even if it doesn’t achieve the optimum commercial potential.

So it’s about being brave enough to do that, but also being surrounded with people who can tolerate that attitude as well.

 

 

What role does your family play in your music making?

 

We’re all creatives – all three of my siblings, my sisters and my brother, we’re all artists.

Believe it or not, all three of my sisters speak fluent Mandarin and lived in Beijing for years, so that’s partly why I spent so much time there.

But we all help each other, so if I need a certain thing made, I’ll help them; if they need help in another area they’ll ask me, we exchange.

Like if Christian Louboutin needs help with some items for his collection, he now calls on my sister, and it goes further than just the family now, we’re a collective and it makes a lot of impossible things, either because we don’t have the time or the budget, possible because we have friends and family who will just launch themselves into things without even wasting time thinking about it.

 

 

Mika performs at West Lake Music Festival (exact time tba), taking place on Saturday 30-Sunday 31 May. See full details.

 

 

 

Edited May 9, 2015 by Kumazzz

[~TheLoveYouBreathe]

Thanks Mellody, it's very interesting!

[charlie20]

And oh my God, do you mean he's not really half lebanese? But he is still born in Beirut isn't he?

 

 

Of course he's Lebanese. It's just that for some reason he's always identified his mother as Lebanese, when in fact she was born in the United States. She's of Lebanese descent, but she's a US citizen, as far as I can tell.

 

If anyone has doubts, also because the media, press, social networks, and even wikipedia (and of course what the same Mika often says in interviews, although he doesn't speak of nationality, but of cultural belonging, indeed the mix of cultures in which he and all his family belong), are confusing:

 

http://www.mikafanclub.com/topic/14964-what-nationality-is-mika/page-3?hl=%20mika%20%20nationality

 

http://in.reuters.com/article/2009/09/19/us-mika-idINTRE58I09520090919

 

Quote: "Mika was born in Lebanon but has a dual U.S. and British citizenship"

 

http://beirutspring.com/blog/2008/08/04/guest-writer-why-it-matters-that-mika-is-not-lebanese/

 

Although here there is of course the same mistake regarding his mother, because she was born in the US and she's Us citizen.And, in any case, not even she can/could have the Lebanese nationality because her mother is Lebanese, but her father was Syrian.

 

If anyone is interested, here there are some other article about Lebanese women's rights in English, Italian and French:

 

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/Mar-21/167487-hariri-vows-to-achieve-womens-rights.ashx#axzz1rdonZ68l

 

https://nationalitycampaign.wordpress.com/

 

https://beirut7.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/351/

 

http://www.lorientlejour.com/multimedia/583-le-ras-le-bol-des-libanaises-qui-ne-peuvent-transmettre-leur-nationalite-randa-awada-3-3

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Asia#Lebanon

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_nationality_law

 

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condizione_della_donna_in_Asia#cite_note-85

 

I think that Mika has clearly and understandably always felt the need to protect himself, his family, his partner and the other persons close to him by too much outside attention.Now he is definitely more open and honest, but some defense mechanisms are obviously still there (old habits die hard!) and this too is understandable. 

Edited May 12, 2015 by charlie20