MIKA in US Press - 2015

[Marilyn Mastin]

Another article about Mika and "Good Guys":

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/05/27/mika_s_good_guys_video_has_a_powerful_gay_message.html

 

Mika Sings a Hymn to Gay History in New Single “Good Guys”

 

By J. Bryan Lowder

 

 

It might be because I recently published a long meditation on gay male culture and history, but damn if Mika’s new single “Good Guys” and the accompanying video doesn’t have me a little teary in the office today. The bittersweet song, which is from the openly gay artist’s fourth studio album No Place in Heaven (out June 16), is a psalm of pining for the gay past, explicitly so—the first stanza ends by asking “Where have all the gay guys gone?”

 

Mika’s skill as a songwriter is on full display here in a gorgeous arrangement benefiting from lush string, piano, and children’s choir writing. But the real draw is the song’s lyrical construction. Mika clarifies that he’s not just nostalgic for the heady days of pre-AIDS gay liberation (“It’s not the cowboys that I’m missing anymore/ That problem was already old in ’94”), but instead looking back to a time when gay men saw themselves as having something special to offer to the mainstream, or at the very least to each other. He acknowledges that gay exceptionalism is out of fashion these days (“Don’t be offended, this might seem a little wrong”), but then repurposes a line of Oscar Wilde’s into a moving hymn to the power and insight that can come from oppression: “If we are all in the gutter, it doesn’t change who we are/ cause some of us in the gutter are looking up at the stars.”

 

The most touching part of the song is Mika’s séancelike summoning—“To all my heroes that were dressed up in gold/ only hopin’ one day I could be so bold”—of all the gay figures that have inspired him: W.H. Auden, James Dean, Walt Whitman, Cole Porter, and Jean Cocteau, among others. This pantheon comes after a striking bit of songcraft, in which Mika shifts “gay guys” to “good guys” in his question, insisting on the still-powerful equivalence “gay is good.”

 

The video, a stately contemporary dance number, is a perfect match for the song. Mika is moved around like a doll through a number of different personas by the dance troupe: a straight-laced businessman, a queen, an astronaut, and a prisoner sentenced to hard labor—probably a reference to Wilde’s debilitating time behind bars for “gross indecency.” Indeed, much of the choreography communicates a tension between external constraints and a desire to escape—a struggle all too familiar to the gay men Mika misses, and to many of his contemporaries today.  

 

 

J. Bryan Lowder is a Slate associate editor. He writes and edits for Outward, Slate’s LGBTQ section, and for the culture section.

This writer really gets what Mika is saying in the song, and what the video represents! I've got a lump in my throat and tears that are threatening to flood my eyes. This is all so amazing! Thanks for posting.

[mamiam]

This writer really gets what Mika is saying in the song, and what the video represents! I've got a lump in my throat and tears that are threatening to flood my eyes. This is all so amazing! Thanks for posting.

 

Yes, that's what I think too - people analyze MIKA, and his works,  very well now!  And it's super promotion!!  

 

Love,love

me

[Littlelady]

yes, so happy about it

[charlie20]

Thank you so much Charlie20!! - It's such a pleasure to be a devoted MIKA fan these days, with all these lovely articles coming up !!

I feel like I'm walking on pink clouds - sooo happy :-) :-)

 

Love,love

me

 

 

This writer really gets what Mika is saying in the song, and what the video represents! I've got a lump in my throat and tears that are threatening to flood my eyes. This is all so amazing! Thanks for posting.

 

You are welcome! And I totally agree with you 

[Kumazzz]

I would like to save all interviews for MFCers of the future.

 

INTERVIEW

 

billboard.com

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6576071/mika-freddie-mercury-simon-cowell-interview

And here you can find the online version of BillBoard article with more questions

 

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6576071/mika-freddie-mercury-simon-cowell-interview

Brit Pop Singer Mika on Freddie Mercury, Simon Cowell's Rejection & Having the Last Laugh

 

article

 

 

By Andrew Hampp, New York

 

| May 26, 2015 4:00 PM EDT

 

For his fourth album No Place in Heaven (due June 16 via Casablanca/Republic), British power-pop singer Mika, 31, is embracing his many theatrical quirks.

"I think it's important to be an unusual artist," Mika says on the phone from Italy, where he's just announced a new season as a judge on The X Factor Italy. The singing competition is one of several side gigs that have kept him occupied in between tours as the international hitmaker behind Billboard Hot 100 hits "Grace Kelly" and "Love Today" (from 2007's Life In Cartoon Motion) to 2012's "Celebrate" and "Popular Song," the latter of which was remixed as a 2013 duet with a pre-superstar Ariana Grande. Working alongside longtime producer Greg Wells (Katy Perry, Adele), Mika indulges his many influences on his latest album, from piano bar troubadour ("All She Wants," "Good Wife") to anthemic boulevardier ("Good Guys," the title track) to disco divo (lead single "Talk About You").

Mika Kicks Off Brief Stateside Tour With Brooklyn Show

 

Though he can sell out stadiums overseas, Mika has mostly remained on the fringe of the American mainstream -- though he's not without some high-profile fans. 

His music can currently be heard in a key scene from Pitch Perfect 2 ("I'm terrified to see it," Mika confesses) and may soon appear in the upcoming Zoolander 2 (he recently filmed a cameo in the hotly anticipated sequel).

And if his label Republic has anything to say about it, he'll be spending even more time Stateside in 2016, with plans to mount a New York residency of sorts. 

"Avery [Lipman]'s all over me to develop a show, and he is one of the fiercest statistic watchers and number counters,"

Mika says of Republic's co-president. 

"After he came to my [Webster Hall] show in New York he said, 'How can we build this so it can exist every night?'

I think they know that the path is going to be an interesting one going forward, even if it's going to be an atypical one. But that's why I'm proud to be an atypical artist."

Billboard spoke at length with Mika to learn more about his busy TV and film schedule and the difficult phone calls that led to a key song on No Place in Heaven.

 

You just launched a new season of X Factor in Italy with Simon Cowell. How's he treating you?

 

The funny thing was, the first time I sat with Simon Cowell was when I was younger and presenting my demos -- and he rejected me. It’s just kind of weird, you can never know what happens in life, you never know when someone comes back tin the picture. So I’m sitting there next to him at a press conference launching the show, laughing to myself.

 

Did he remember you?

 

He forgets nothing and he’s extremely funny.

He’s really bad with his sense of humor, which explains a lot, and he’s so successful as well.

There’s this very wicked child within him. You know he’s clever and he’s tough, but he also has this playful quality that enables us to do all this stuff.

 

You’ve enhanced your global -- and multilingual -- profile since your last record, becoming a judge on The X Factor Italy and The Voice France in the last two years. How has that experience shaped your writing process?

 

I decided to consolidate that gap between who I am as a person, and what my public image is.

I think one of the disadvantages and advantages of the career that I have is that I have a really global reach, and my career is made up in pieces all over the world.

From my kind of more niche status in America, to Korea where we’re playing to 15 and a half thousand next week, then it’s France, Spain all these different places.

I mean something different in each place.

My biggest ambition as I turned 30 was to put myself out there and not try to protect myself so much, and let my own personality shine. As soon as you’re comfortable with yourself publicly, you can do anything.

 

How did that shape the new album?

 

I wanted to write something that dared to not even try to follow any formats, or any kind of sound, just a songwriter record.

The only thing is because I’m so obsessed with pop melody you get that handcrafted songwriter record with an enormous amount of melody.

My heroes are form the olden age of pop music from the 60s and 70s, they have this very credible, organic but extremely melodic and pop kind of songwriting, and they’re the kinds of artist that were making these kinds of records.

That was important to me to make something that didn’t sound like now, something that could have been made five years ago or in five years’ time.

I’ve limited my palette to do it, I rented a living room in the house I live in Los Angeles, I pulled a soundcard and microphone in, and by limiting my powers so much it forced me to be more creative and playful and honest with my lyrics and search harder for melodies.

 

Tell me about how Freddie Mercury inspired the song “Last Party” from No Place in Heaven. 

 

It’s about, in a sense, Freddie Mercury when he found out he was HIV positive, and had this very strong reaction that kind of manifested into him closing himself up in a nightclub for a couple days and having this mad party.

It’s probably a myth, I don’t know how true it is, but certainly it’s a story that’s quite well-known.

It made me think about when you find out terrible news, how do you deal with it? 

I wanted to put that into a song as best I could, and tried to make it as intimate as possible and this thing that I crafted and the way I produced it, I tried to make it as out-of-context of contemporary pop music as I could make it. And it’s weird because with pop music, you have a particular opportunity to describe the things that are really hard to describe a normal daily life or normal words. This strange combination of terrible news and that rush of adrenaline -- I know because in my life I’ve had all these awful things happen but this strange rush of adrenaline at the same time and trying to convey that in a song is almost one of the most representative ways of that strange clash of emotions.

And you find that in a lot of these songs --  “All She Wants” and “Good Wife” also have this mix of sweet and joyful with the bitterness of life.

 

You mentioned at your recent show at Webster Hall that songs from your previous albums (“Billy Brown,” “Big Girl You Are Beautiful”) have cost you friendships.

Are there any songs on the new album that you fear may endanger some of your relationships?

 

I was afraid that “Last Party” would endanger some of my relationships or that I would be invading sacred territory, as far as Brian May or Roger Taylor, who I know personally.

I sent them the song in advance, and they luckily loved it and gave me their approval.

As far as “Good Wife” and “All She Wants,” they always are about real people, but that’s the risk you take.

The amount of times we sit with friends, we never really know that they’re thinking inside their head, you have to applaud sometimes knowing the truth, given that the truth is a bit harder for polite society.

When you write you have to throw polite society out the window and have the freedom of expression that you need to make something good and engaging and incredible.

If you can do it in pop music, where can you do it? It’s the same kind of  things with comedy -- good comedy, really clever comedy breaches and deals with subjects that are unapproachable in another context.

The same goes with personal relationships and other stories, if you can’t do it in pop music where else could you do it?

 

Your song “Lollipop” is featured in a key scene in Pitch Perfect 2.

Have you seen the movie yet?

 

No I haven’t -- I’m terrified. I’m worried they’re gonna screw it up. I heard it’s sung by the Treblemakers.

It’s just funny how things happen, you know?

Music syncs, film and television for me have been such a powerful engine, and the reach of that stuff just around the world is a massive, massive part of my career as a writer.

And it’s funny that in America, where I’m the least commercial of artists in a sense, compared relatively to my other markets, it also offers me the biggest opportunities and platforms for my music.

It just shows you, the one thing about my career -- it shows you there are a million ways to crack an egg. There’s so many ways to form a career in today’s landscape, and it just takes a lot of work, a lot of legwork.

 

You recently filmed a cameo for Zoolander 2 in Rome. What can you say about your role?

 

It was funny, it was way better than I expected it would be.

I can’t say what I’m doing, but there’s a big sync sequence with some of my songs associated to it as well.

I love the way my music has been used in TV and film over the years.

There’s something to be said about the gunpowder of my songs staying dry to illustrate a story.

 

 

 

[Kumazzz]

INTERVIEW

 

MySpace

https://myspace.com/article/2015/5/27/mika-warm-reception-america-delicious-interview

On 5/28/2015 at 3:40 AM, dcdeb said:

Lovely article in MySpace of all things.

 

https://myspace.com/article/2015/5/27/mika-warm-reception-america-delicious-interview

Q&A MIKA On His Warm Reception Back to America: "It's Delicious"

Photo by Timothy Norris/Getty Images

By Hugh McIntyre • May 27, 2015

 

The Lebanese-British singer-songwriter gets ready to release his fourth studio album, 'No Place In Heaven,' and is determined to carve a permanent space for himself in America.

 

 

Since the very beginning, singer-songwriter Mika has been a standout talent, and one that critics and fans alike found themselves drawn to.

Now almost 10 years into his recording career, the flamboyance and the unique sound that only he can bring to the table have only gotten better with time, as is evidenced by his latest collection, No Place in Heaven, which is due out in June around the world.

The album is led by the upbeat and colorful (what else could we expect from Mika) “Talk About You,” which, if you haven’t experienced it in a while, will give you a healthy dose of the piano-fronted pop that made him a star in the first place.

You have a massive following in Europe…

...and in Asia!

 

Exactly. How do you feel about the reception of your music in the US versus around the world?

The commercial reception in terms of radio play is something I almost don’t even think about. I don’t quantify it, because I can’t.

I have a huge amount of opportunities that come out of America.

I mean something different in every country that I perform in now.

I’m different in Italy, I’m different in France, and I’m different in Korea, where I’m playing the Olympic Hall, where we sold 16,000 tickets in two weeks’ time.

I’m such an atypical artist, and I exist in such a strange place, especially in the United States, but then when I stand on stage and I look out at the people in front of me, every single type, especially more and more young people, like twenty to thirty, it seems almost cathartic to them. It belongs to them.

The gunpowder has always been kept dry. It’s never been really big on mainstream radio, it’s always stayed in a certain zone, and as a result it belongs to the fans.

They lose their minds because it’s not really out in public.

My life is full of contrasts. Every time I announced a show with nothing more than a tweet they sell out. How?

I have no idea. It beguiles me. It is confusing and fun at the same time. I don’t make massively commercial music, and never have. It’s very homespun.

Some of it has gone way further than anything I would have imagined, but at the end of the day, my process is very indie.

 

How does your creative process differ when it comes to your visuals versus when you’re making music?

 

It’s the same.

I draw all of it. If I wasn’t a musician, I’d have been an illustrator. I make all the artwork and the sets myself.

My sister and I have done all my visuals, all my posters, t-shirts, everything.

Bizarrely we’re now getting jobs to design stuff, from shoes to Swatch collections.

It’s all connected with. The good thing is I manage to bring it back to music, which helps me.

So when are we going to see a shoe designed by Mika?

 

The shoes will probably be out at the beginning of next year.

The next Swatch campaign comes out at the end of this year.

I’m also making two books that will be out at the end of this year as well.

One of them is an illustrated diary, and the second one is an art book.

 

On top of the art, how much does your personal style play into the overall image?

 

From the beginning, I didn’t have the budget for clothes, so I made my own. I made them with my mom.

When I decided to do television in Europe, I said I was going to do it my own way.

I was looking around at different TV shows and thinking that everybody was dressed so badly.

I was like “let’s just go and do it the way we want”.

All the clothes I wear on all of the shows are Valentino Couture, and they are all one-off pieces that get made as a result of exchanges that we have.

We come up with these weird things and we make them into clothes.

Are all of the blazers you wore in your “Talk About You” video all Valentino?

 

They are Valentino Couture, Moschino Couture, and a suit my mom made.

 

Which one did your mom make?

 

The dark green one. The shinier one.

How do you think your sound has changed over the past several albums?

 

The fingerprint and the storytelling techniques are instantly recognizable in everything that I do.

I would say that my third album was a rupture, a definite break. Everything about it was deflective, there’s no eye contact.

The writing was very pop, but the production was hard to get into.

This one is a lot more transparent and a lot more direct. It’s a lot more cleaned out and super simple.

What made you want to be so transparent this time around?

 

It felt like it was an appropriate snapshot of me now. I’m now 31, and you realize that transparency and being candid are the only ways to grow up without dying.

Without dying?

 

Without shutting down. Growing up and shutting down are not two things that always have to happen together.

You don’t always have to become more reserved the older you get, and in fact the opposite can happen.

So would you say that the main shift that caused you to want to express yourself in a much more direct way was your hitting 30,

or was there anything else in your life that made you think this way?

 

Mainly that. It’s affected all my decisions, from the work that I do to making television to being more open about every part of my life. It’s all related.

How does it feel to come back to America and see this massively warm reception?

 

It’s delicious. It’s fun!

 

I love that you called it delicious.

 

It really is.

There’s no other way to describe it.

There’s something that happens with my music in America where people just soften and open up at the shows.

They lose themselves a little bit, and that’s what’s so powerful about it. Standing on stage and seeing everybody be on the same wavelength is really incredible.

I wish that I could find a way to take that and find a way to present that experience on a more regular basis.

So maybe it’s theater off Broadway. Maybe it’s a concert. Maybe it’s something else.

Maybe there’s a nonconventional way of having more of a presence in New York for example than just a show every two years.

 

Do you actually have the idea of a musical going in the back of your head?

 

Yeah. A Mika musical in New York, starting with workshops in the middle of nowhere and then going off Broadway, and then anything’s possible...if it’s good.

I’d love to take the energy and the feeling that people have when they come to ony of my gigs and to give it a home.

It would be great to finally have a platform in America.

I think back to the beginning of my career in the UK, and we’d go around and people would say “there’s no market for you here” or “there’s no need for you here,"

and so I went and created my own world, my own visuals, my own clothes, my own everything, because I was forced to.

I look at America today and I feel the same. If there’s no platform for me, but I know that there’s people here for me, I’ll just have to invent my own.

So that’s my next challenge.

 

 

Edited March 6, 2020 by Kumazzz
adding an instagram link

[Kumazzz]

VIDEO INTERVIEW

 

Access Hollywood

 

MIKA Describes New Album 'No Place In Heaven'

https://screen.yahoo.com/mika-describes-album-no-place-160000762.html

 

 

Mika Explains 'Last Party' Inspiration

http://www.accesshollywood.com/mika-explains-last-party-inspiration_video_2804937

Edited June 1, 2015 by Kumazzz

[Marilyn Mastin]

INTERVIEW

 

MySpace

https://myspace.com/article/2015/5/27/mika-warm-reception-america-delicious-interview

Q&A MIKA On His Warm Reception Back to America: "It's Delicious"

Photo by Timothy Norris/Getty Images

By Hugh McIntyre • May 27, 2015

 

The Lebanese-British singer-songwriter gets ready to release his fourth studio album, 'No Place In Heaven,' and is determined to carve a permanent space for himself in America.

 

Since the very beginning, singer-songwriter Mika has been a standout talent, and one that critics and fans alike found themselves drawn to. Now almost 10 years into his recording career, the flamboyance and the unique sound that only he can bring to the table have only gotten better with time, as is evidenced by his latest collection, No Place in Heaven, which is due out in June around the world. The album is led by the upbeat and colorful (what else could we expect from Mika) “Talk About You,” which, if you haven’t experienced it in a while, will give you a healthy dose of the piano-fronted pop that made him a star in the first place.

 

You have a massive following in Europe…

...and in Asia!

 

Exactly. How do you feel about the reception of your music in the US versus around the world?

The commercial reception in terms of radio play is something I almost don’t even think about. I don’t quantify it, because I can’t.

I have a huge amount of opportunities that come out of America.

I mean something different in every country that I perform in now.

I’m different in Italy, I’m different in France, and I’m different in Korea, where I’m playing the Olympic Hall, where we sold 16,000 tickets in two weeks’ time.

 

I’m such an atypical artist, and I exist in such a strange place, especially in the United States, but then when I stand on stage and I look out at the people in front of me, every single type, especially more and more young people, like twenty to thirty, it seems almost cathartic to them. It belongs to them.

The gunpowder has always been kept dry. It’s never been really big on mainstream radio, it’s always stayed in a certain zone, and as a result it belongs to the fans.

They lose their minds because it’s not really out in public.

 

My life is full of contrasts. Every time I announced a show with nothing more than a tweet they sell out. How?

I have no idea. It beguiles me. It is confusing and fun at the same time. I don’t make massively commercial music, and never have. It’s very homespun.

Some of it has gone way further than anything I would have imagined, but at the end of the day, my process is very indie.

 

How does your creative process differ when it comes to your visuals versus when you’re making music?

It’s the same.

I draw all of it. If I wasn’t a musician, I’d have been an illustrator. I make all the artwork and the sets myself.

My sister and I have done all my visuals, all my posters, t-shirts, everything.

 

Bizarrely we’re now getting jobs to design stuff, from shoes to Swatch collections.

It’s all connected with. The good thing is I manage to bring it back to music, which helps me.

 

So when are we going to see a shoe designed by Mika?

The shoes will probably be out at the beginning of next year.

The next Swatch campaign comes out at the end of this year.

I’m also making two books that will be out at the end of this year as well.

One of them is an illustrated diary, and the second one is an art book.

 

On top of the art, how much does your personal style play into the overall image?

From the beginning, I didn’t have the budget for clothes, so I made my own. I made them with my mom.

When I decided to do television in Europe, I said I was going to do it my own way.

I was looking around at different TV shows and thinking that everybody was dressed so badly.

I was like “let’s just go and do it the way we want”.

All the clothes I wear on all of the shows are Valentino Couture, and they are all one-off pieces that get made as a result of exchanges that we have.

We come up with these weird things and we make them into clothes.

 

Are all of the blazers you wore in your “Talk About You” video all Valentino?

They are Valentino Couture, Moschino Couture, and a suit my mom made.

 

Which one did your mom make?

The dark green one. The shinier one.

 

How do you think your sound has changed over the past several albums?

The fingerprint and the storytelling techniques are instantly recognizable in everything that I do.

I would say that my third album was a rupture, a definite break. Everything about it was deflective, there’s no eye contact.

The writing was very pop, but the production was hard to get into.

This one is a lot more transparent and a lot more direct. It’s a lot more cleaned out and super simple.

 

What made you want to be so transparent this time around?

It felt like it was an appropriate snapshot of me now. I’m now 31, and you realize that transparency and being candid are the only ways to grow up without dying.

 

Without dying?

Without shutting down. Growing up and shutting down are not two things that always have to happen together.

You don’t always have to become more reserved the older you get, and in fact the opposite can happen.

 

So would you say that the main shift that caused you to want to express yourself in a much more direct way was your hitting 30,

or was there anything else in your life that made you think this way?

Mainly that. It’s affected all my decisions, from the work that I do to making television to being more open about every part of my life. It’s all related.

 

How does it feel to come back to America and see this massively warm reception?

 

It’s delicious. It’s fun!

 

I love that you called it delicious.

It really is.

There’s no other way to describe it.

There’s something that happens with my music in America where people just soften and open up at the shows.

They lose themselves a little bit, and that’s what’s so powerful about it. Standing on stage and seeing everybody be on the same wavelength is really incredible.

I wish that I could find a way to take that and find a way to present that experience on a more regular basis.

So maybe it’s theater off Broadway. Maybe it’s a concert. Maybe it’s something else.

Maybe there’s a nonconventional way of having more of a presence in New York for example than just a show every two years.

 

Do you actually have the idea of a musical going in the back of your head?

Yeah. A Mika musical in New York, starting with workshops in the middle of nowhere and then going off Broadway, and then anything’s possible...if it’s good.

I’d love to take the energy and the feeling that people have when they come to ony of my gigs and to give it a home.

It would be great to finally have a platform in America.

 

I think back to the beginning of my career in the UK, and we’d go around and people would say “there’s no market for you here” or “there’s no need for you here,"

and so I went and created my own world, my own visuals, my own clothes, my own everything, because I was forced to.

I look at America today and I feel the same. If there’s no platform for me, but I know that there’s people here for me, I’ll just have to invent my own.

So that’s my next challenge.

I clicked "Like", but I wish there was a love-bomb button that would cause virtual streamers to come onto the page!!

When he mentioned a musical I had fears of something in France, or Italy, with French or Italian songs. This is the best news! A show on Broadway, or near to it, would be fantastic and would be mentioned, and ultimately performed, in the UK, and would be in English!

Happy days are here and even happier ones are coming!

Edited June 1, 2015 by Marilyn Mastin

[Kumazzz]

NEXT Magazine NY June 12, 2015Issue 22.51

 

http://issuu.com/nextmagazine.com/docs/next_issue_22.51/1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kumazzz]

Pride Life (US) 2015

http://issuu.com/pridemagazine/docs/pride15issuu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[nuri]

thank you!! I'll read all

[Marilyn Mastin]

The new articles are fantastic! Thanks for posting!

[mamiam]

Thank youuu Eriko!! So happy for all the positive attention our good guy gets, also in the US - it's amazing !!!

 

Love,love

me

[charlie20]

Thanks a lot, Eriko, as always, for sharing these articles!   

They are very good, and especially in this he says very interesting things.One of the things that struck me is the last part of the interview, that is the reaction of his family to the comments, the things that people say about him.

 

NEXT Magazine NY June 12, 2015Issue 22.51

 

http://issuu.com/nextmagazine.com/docs/next_issue_22.51/1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2015 by charlie20

[mamiam]

Thanks a lot, Eriko, as always, for sharing these articles!   

They are very good, and especially in this he says very interesting things.One of the things that struck me is the last part of the interview, that is the reaction of his family to the comments, the things that people say about him.

 

Yes, I agree - and also in one of his new songs he talks about this subject: WORDS - and how important it is - hopefully it will make some people think a bit more, before they speak...    

 

Love,love

me 

[SjoerdvWijk]

NEXT Magazine NY June 12, 2015Issue 22.51

 

http://issuu.com/nextmagazine.com/docs/next_issue_22.51/1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you! Hahaha Italy The Voice

[dcdeb]

https://www.frontiersmedia.com/gay-entertainment/channel-music/2015/06/15/florence-the-machine-mika-giorgio-moroder-music-reviews/

 

Mika
No Place in Heaven
(Republic)
4/5 stars
Since Mika’s confirmed what everyone already knew and created an affectingly sophisticated song cycle from it with 2012’s The Origin of Love, the openly gay pop fop returns to business as usual with this fourth release. Only here’s the thing—it isn’t. His hook-filled tunes offer up such an abundance of surface pleasures you could easily miss what’s going on underneath. Yet listen intently and you’ll meet the disappointed mother of “All She Wants” who laments her heteronormative dream of a wife and child for her wayward son, or a father’s religious persecution of his infidel son on the title track (gays be damned!). Mika still loves his camp—even tips his musical hat to bisexual forefather Peter Allen on “Rio”—yet his pop grows more assured each time out. —D.L.

[dcdeb]

https://unicornbooty.com/now-hear-this-new-music-from-mika-walk-off-the-earth-redd-kross-and-more/

 

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth and says “IT’S TUESDAY! THAT MEANS IT’S RECORD DAY! GO! BUY MUSIC!” And here’s some of the best new music that’s out this week.

 

Our Winner This Week: Mika – No Place In Heaven

Immensely talented and openly gay vocalist Mika is back with his fourth album, No Place In Heaven. Compared to “Grace Kelly”, the new single “Good Guys” features the brilliant pop hooks of the earlier song, but with a more mature sound. Likewise, both singles feature the look at classic fame, but “Good Guys” focuses on the queer heroes of yesteryear. Mika may not have another massive hit, but it’s clear he’s still an ambitious artist.

[dcdeb]

Skip Or Repeat: Nate Ruess, Hilary Duff, James Taylor, Adam Lambert and more

Who comes out on top in this week's crop?

By Katie Hasty Tuesday, Jun 16, 2015 7:38 PM

Prev Photo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next Photo

 

Repeat if you're a fan: Mika, "No Place In Heaven"

It'd be more fun to say that Mika's come a long way, but really the charismatic, grandiose, personal and cartoonish crooner is simply more confident on "Heaven," his fourth full-length effort. The pop singer's joy toying with his own Mercurial space in the music marketplace is just as refreshing (if not cheekily cloying) as it was in 2007 when he first released "Grace Kelly." If that wasn't your starter block, then begin your Mika journey with "Staring at the Sun," to ease you in.

Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/galleries/skip-or-repeat-nate-ruess-hilary-duff-james-taylor-and-mika#UUhBlp8tucJm8qZi.99

[ceebs]

https://www.frontiersmedia.com/gay-entertainment/channel-music/2015/06/15/florence-the-machine-mika-giorgio-moroder-music-reviews/

 

Mika

No Place in Heaven

(Republic)

4/5 stars

Since Mika’s confirmed what everyone already knew and created an affectingly sophisticated song cycle from it with 2012’s The Origin of Love, the openly gay pop fop returns to business as usual with this fourth release. Only here’s the thing—it isn’t. His hook-filled tunes offer up such an abundance of surface pleasures you could easily miss what’s going on underneath. Yet listen intently and you’ll meet the disappointed mother of “All She Wants” who laments her heteronormative dream of a wife and child for her wayward son, or a father’s religious persecution of his infidel son on the title track (gays be damned!). Mika still loves his camp—even tips his musical hat to bisexual forefather Peter Allen on “Rio”—yet his pop grows more assured each time out. —D.L.

This is a very nice review, but I don't like the Pop Fop part. And why do they always have to mention the openly gay thing? Is it really that important?

[Kumazzz]

BlackBook Magazine

http://www.bbook.com/music/mika-interview-no-place-in-heaven/

Lost Boy Mika on His New Album ‘No Place In Heaven’

Posted on

June 16, 2015

by Mathias Rosenzweig

 

 

Interview

 

Lebanese-British singer Mika has created a realm, or perhaps dimension, completely secluded from the “real world.” Like J. M. Barrie’s Lost Boys of Peter Pan, the artist and his fans live in their own form of Neverland, rebelling against the idea of growing up through fantastical songs, filled with childlike curiosity and fresh-faced enthusiasm. The oddly diverse collection of die-hard followers, all under the spell of Mika’s whimsically enchanting persona and talent, have helped turn the artist’s first few albums, Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much, into massive successes—even in the real world, garnering commercially-related accolades including Grammys and the like.

When listening to Mika’s fourth album No Place in Heaven, out today, it appears that the Lost Boy has found himself—or at least grown up a bit.

The artist maintains his idiosyncratic vocal stylings and fancifully unique orchestrations while tackling relatively grown-up material.

Mainly, he questions the afterlife, particularly focused on understanding heaven, as well as the modern world’s imaginative construct of post-mortem paradise.

We talked to Mika about breathing life into new material, the concept of “coming of age,” and how it takes a very serious person to stay playful. 

 

 

 

I was able to catch your show last night at Webster Hall in New York. You seem to really get a kick out of watching your audience’s reaction to your music. 

 

I think the objective of the show is like, you know, everyone walks in and, especially with my crowd, they’re from all these different parts of life, and they’re all different types of people.

You’ve got hipsters, you’ve got guys with their wives who are like forty-five years old who know every single word to every song, or teenagers trying to be twenty-one or eighteen or whatever, and at a certain point it just comes together where everyone unanimously feels like they’re in the same place.

And their defenses just fall down on the floor.

And that is a really, really powerful feeling.

And provoking that is almost like…I have a sense of responsibility to feel like that’s the objective of the show.

And you know, it doesn’t have to be loud. People don’t have to be jumping around like maniacs in order to arrive there.

You do it often just sitting down in a symphonic concert. You can achieve the same thing. 

But in order to achieve that, I think that there has to be this kind of barrier between the crowd and me, and whether it’s emotional, physical, whatever it is, it’s completely candid, and completely in the same place at the same level as the audience in front of you. That’s rule #1. 

 

What is it like performing new music live? 

 

It gives me a huge amount of energy and it gives me a lot of context. It enables me to put my music and the stuff that I write into a context. Otherwise, how am I supposed to feel like what I do is real? I mean, I perform all over the world and I need something different in every single place where I work, and at the same time in America, I’ve had a very atypical career. I’ve never been in the mainstream and I exist in my own space, and when I walk on stage, it gives me a context of where my music is in America. That’s why the intensity of the shows is all the more exaggerated. 

 

Does the song ever change for you after you’ve played it in front of an audience? 

 

Yeah, it’s almost like, the only way I can describe it is, you know you’re….

You’re getting ready to go out. You’re going out on a date, and you’re looking at yourself in the mirror, and you put on your clothes and fix your hair, and you’re looking at yourself.

The way that you’re looking at yourself in the mirror is completely different than the way that you’re going to behave when you’re on the date and there’s no mirror in front of you, and you’re looking at yourself through the reaction of the person that you’re with, and you suddenly turn into a different person.

You’d never squint your eyes like you squint your eyes in the mirror when you’re looking at yourself. You never turned slightly to the right. 

It’s the same process with writing a song. You record it and it’s almost like looking at yourself in the mirror, but also being as honest as you can with yourself.

There’s something quite intimate about it.

When you go live, something about the song changes.

You can like it more and you can like it less. Because it’s not yours anymore—it becomes something else without you even trying.

Like last night was the first time, I don’t know if you were there for the song “Good Wife,” but I’d never sung it before.

And it was amazing to see people kind of listening, and then kind of nodding their heads, and then starting to move their bodies, and then starting to put hands up in the air.

It’s the different layers of approval. 

 

How did you approach this album creatively, perhaps in comparison to your previous work? 

 

I like to impose a pallet, or I like to limit my pallet a little bit, you know?

It makes you more creative and it makes you use what you have around you even more.

So with this album, I actually rented a piano and I wrote and recorded a lot of it at the same time.

I rented a house and everyone had to come to the house to work if they wanted to work with me.

It’s almost a lot more acoustic in the ingredients than the one before.

And that was a conscious decision because I felt like I need to…you know, you react to the stuff you do before and sometimes by imposing limitations, you can actually help yourself be a lot more productive and be more creative.

Having too many options is a very dangerous thing. You can end up losing your focus very easily. 

You want to write and then you want to capture, and you want to do that as honestly as you can.

Especially when you’re an artist like me.

I write the stuff, and I produce it and I curate it.

I guess it’s easier to run away from yourself, and on this record I really wanted to be quite controlled with it.

You can’t identify me with a sound, but you can do it with song lyrics and melodies.

And so I wanted a sound that was as timeless as it possibly could be—you couldn’t tell if recorded ten years ago or in ten years time.

That was the objective. 

 

I actually feel like you have quite an identifiable sound. You really don’t? 

 

In the arrangements and in the writing, but more than the sound or the beats or like the…I’m not a trap artist, I’m not EDM, I’m not Indie, I’m not acoustic…you can’t define it by the sound.

I have a lot of idiosyncrasies built into the way that I write and also my voice.

I try to exaggerate that. 

 

Who did you work on this album with? There are a few voices on there that are not yours. 

 

Every album is like a clan. I kind of see it as this little collective that comes together and you end up very close to all those people for a matter of months, and then you make the record. And so I’ve always had lots of different voices on my records.

I’ve always had, from the first album, different people singing. 

You get this sense of people making a record together, even though it’s me, there’s a lot of people with me.

And you hear that kind of clan and you hear vocals coming back.

You recognize the girl’s voice when she comes back and she’s on a French song, and then she comes back and she’s on “All She Wants.” So it’s like every record has this kind of family of performers on it. 

 

Do you ever get nervous being so forthcoming in your lyrics? As in, do you ever think, “Oh, I hope so and so doesn’t realize this is about them!” 

 

Never ever, ever. I’ve had to deal with a lot of that…but never. It’s so funny because I’m quite a reserved person and I don’t say half of what I say in my songs in real life conversations.

That was I guess why I felt, when I was younger, quite voiceless.

And I felt like very much an outsider. And so I took to writing songs because I could say everything I wanted in songs, and I stay faithful to that to this day. 

 

Peter Lindbergh, who works primarily in fashion, directed your video for “Last Party.” Can you tell about working with him? 

 

Well we had done all these pictures for the album and then we had this idea.

What if one of these pictures started singing to you, like a portrait that took it further.

And so that’s what we ended up doing. We did like thirty takes. It was just him and me.

There was a whole team that was coming in between each take to reset, check on everything, and then they would all disappear and it would just be him sitting at the camera.

And it’s so funny—the way he takes pictures is the same way he directs this video…he manipulates people in the best possible way, because even someone who is resistant to it, he can capture them extremely honestly and intimately.

And so with this song that provokes so much imagery, it was fun to contrast it and do something totally pure and simple. 

 

Your first few albums were often deemed as having a “Coming of Age” theme. Has this changed in the new work? 

 

I think it’s more than ever about this kind of growing down in order to grow up.

It takes a really serious person to stay playful.

I think that it’s really right in the heart of this record, that playful quality, that kind of devilish attitude.

Talking about everything from love to politics to my own family and giving myself a license with good humor to say things that I would never normally say.

The others were about coming of age and growing up.

This one’s about growing down in order to grow up properly—in order to stay the same person, you know? Not to slowly extinguish that playfulness that is there much more readily when we’re younger. 

 

Your set features a daunting yet wonderfully whimsical cityscape backdrop, which also appears in your album artwork. How did you fall upon these visuals? 

 

Well one thing leads to another. I would never have thought in the beginning of the design process for the record that I would end up with a city.

But it just works, and the reason why it works is because we based it a lot on visuals from the Futurist Movement in the 1950s and this idea from the title No Place In heaven.

Well, what is heaven? Heaven used to be represented with lakes, rolling green fields, friendly animals everywhere, but now it’s not.

Heaven now is a $180 million dollar apartment in a tall New York building. It’s this kind of urban Elysium that we’re living in and it’s funny because in the old days, that used to represent hell. It did not represent heaven.

What I’m doing is, “Is this really heaven, or is it still hell?”

And playing with all those visuals and using the future in this kind of naïve aesthetic, in order to do that, it opens up a lot of possibilities in that question. 

But it’s funny—one of my favorite pieces of set design ever was for the movie West Side Story.

If you look at the way it’s designed, it’s all about creating this sort of like…the sky is the most valuable piece of real estate, but it’s just squeezed between these buildings that kind of make everyone feel really suppressed and trapped, and they can’t get away from their problems. It’s amazing how powerful those visuals are. 

 

I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something really comforting about your cityscape, even though it is a bit dark. 

 

I agree with you.

It’s pleasing to look at, and you don’t really know why. Because it doesn’t feel childish.

But the good thing is to have really precise reasons for the things you do, but then to have it feel really effortless and just nice to look at.

You don’t know why you like it, you don’t understand what the process is behind it, but at the same time it still works. 

 

What would you like to tell fans before they press play on the new album? 

 

I guess to understand that this record does not compete; it is not trying to compete with radio music.

It’s not trying to compete with any other form of music.

It exists in its own little world. It’s almost like a little show.

You listen to it from beginning to end, and it takes you on a little journey.

That’s why the visuals are so important; it’s to contextualize the music.

So listen to it almost by detaching yourself from what we’re so used to hearing on radio and stuff and just form your own storyline with it.

It’s really quite effective when you listen to it like that.

 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2015 by Kumazzz

[DongDong]

 

BlackBook Magazine

http://www.bbook.com/music/mika-interview-no-place-in-heaven/

Lost Boy Mika on His New Album ‘No Place In Heaven’

Posted on

June 16, 2015

by Mathias Rosenzweig

 

 

Interview

 

Lebanese-British singer Mika has created a realm, or perhaps dimension, completely secluded from the “real world.” Like J. M. Barrie’s Lost Boys of Peter Pan, the artist and his fans live in their own form of Neverland, rebelling against the idea of growing up through fantastical songs, filled with childlike curiosity and fresh-faced enthusiasm. The oddly diverse collection of die-hard followers, all under the spell of Mika’s whimsically enchanting persona and talent, have helped turn the artist’s first few albums, Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much, into massive successes—even in the real world, garnering commercially-related accolades including Grammys and the like.

When listening to Mika’s fourth album No Place in Heaven, out today, it appears that the Lost Boy has found himself—or at least grown up a bit.

The artist maintains his idiosyncratic vocal stylings and fancifully unique orchestrations while tackling relatively grown-up material.

Mainly, he questions the afterlife, particularly focused on understanding heaven, as well as the modern world’s imaginative construct of post-mortem paradise.

We talked to Mika about breathing life into new material, the concept of “coming of age,” and how it takes a very serious person to stay playful. 

 

 

 

I was able to catch your show last night at Webster Hall in New York. You seem to really get a kick out of watching your audience’s reaction to your music. 

 

I think the objective of the show is like, you know, everyone walks in and, especially with my crowd, they’re from all these different parts of life, and they’re all different types of people.

You’ve got hipsters, you’ve got guys with their wives who are like forty-five years old who know every single word to every song, or teenagers trying to be twenty-one or eighteen or whatever, and at a certain point it just comes together where everyone unanimously feels like they’re in the same place.

And their defenses just fall down on the floor.

And that is a really, really powerful feeling.

And provoking that is almost like…I have a sense of responsibility to feel like that’s the objective of the show.

And you know, it doesn’t have to be loud. People don’t have to be jumping around like maniacs in order to arrive there.

You do it often just sitting down in a symphonic concert. You can achieve the same thing. 

But in order to achieve that, I think that there has to be this kind of barrier between the crowd and me, and whether it’s emotional, physical, whatever it is, it’s completely candid, and completely in the same place at the same level as the audience in front of you. That’s rule #1. 

 

What is it like performing new music live? 

 

It gives me a huge amount of energy and it gives me a lot of context. It enables me to put my music and the stuff that I write into a context. Otherwise, how am I supposed to feel like what I do is real? I mean, I perform all over the world and I need something different in every single place where I work, and at the same time in America, I’ve had a very atypical career. I’ve never been in the mainstream and I exist in my own space, and when I walk on stage, it gives me a context of where my music is in America. That’s why the intensity of the shows is all the more exaggerated. 

 

Does the song ever change for you after you’ve played it in front of an audience? 

 

Yeah, it’s almost like, the only way I can describe it is, you know you’re….

You’re getting ready to go out. You’re going out on a date, and you’re looking at yourself in the mirror, and you put on your clothes and fix your hair, and you’re looking at yourself.

The way that you’re looking at yourself in the mirror is completely different than the way that you’re going to behave when you’re on the date and there’s no mirror in front of you, and you’re looking at yourself through the reaction of the person that you’re with, and you suddenly turn into a different person.

You’d never squint your eyes like you squint your eyes in the mirror when you’re looking at yourself. You never turned slightly to the right. 

It’s the same process with writing a song. You record it and it’s almost like looking at yourself in the mirror, but also being as honest as you can with yourself.

There’s something quite intimate about it.

When you go live, something about the song changes.

You can like it more and you can like it less. Because it’s not yours anymore—it becomes something else without you even trying.

Like last night was the first time, I don’t know if you were there for the song “Good Wife,” but I’d never sung it before.

And it was amazing to see people kind of listening, and then kind of nodding their heads, and then starting to move their bodies, and then starting to put hands up in the air.

It’s the different layers of approval. 

 

How did you approach this album creatively, perhaps in comparison to your previous work? 

 

I like to impose a pallet, or I like to limit my pallet a little bit, you know?

It makes you more creative and it makes you use what you have around you even more.

So with this album, I actually rented a piano and I wrote and recorded a lot of it at the same time.

I rented a house and everyone had to come to the house to work if they wanted to work with me.

It’s almost a lot more acoustic in the ingredients than the one before.

And that was a conscious decision because I felt like I need to…you know, you react to the stuff you do before and sometimes by imposing limitations, you can actually help yourself be a lot more productive and be more creative.

Having too many options is a very dangerous thing. You can end up losing your focus very easily. 

You want to write and then you want to capture, and you want to do that as honestly as you can.

Especially when you’re an artist like me.

I write the stuff, and I produce it and I curate it.

I guess it’s easier to run away from yourself, and on this record I really wanted to be quite controlled with it.

You can’t identify me with a sound, but you can do it with song lyrics and melodies.

And so I wanted a sound that was as timeless as it possibly could be—you couldn’t tell if recorded ten years ago or in ten years time.

That was the objective. 

 

I actually feel like you have quite an identifiable sound. You really don’t? 

 

In the arrangements and in the writing, but more than the sound or the beats or like the…I’m not a trap artist, I’m not EDM, I’m not Indie, I’m not acoustic…you can’t define it by the sound.

I have a lot of idiosyncrasies built into the way that I write and also my voice.

I try to exaggerate that. 

 

Who did you work on this album with? There are a few voices on there that are not yours. 

 

Every album is like a clan. I kind of see it as this little collective that comes together and you end up very close to all those people for a matter of months, and then you make the record. And so I’ve always had lots of different voices on my records.

I’ve always had, from the first album, different people singing. 

You get this sense of people making a record together, even though it’s me, there’s a lot of people with me.

And you hear that kind of clan and you hear vocals coming back.

You recognize the girl’s voice when she comes back and she’s on a French song, and then she comes back and she’s on “All She Wants.” So it’s like every record has this kind of family of performers on it. 

 

Do you ever get nervous being so forthcoming in your lyrics? As in, do you ever think, “Oh, I hope so and so doesn’t realize this is about them!” 

 

Never ever, ever. I’ve had to deal with a lot of that…but never. It’s so funny because I’m quite a reserved person and I don’t say half of what I say in my songs in real life conversations.

That was I guess why I felt, when I was younger, quite voiceless.

And I felt like very much an outsider. And so I took to writing songs because I could say everything I wanted in songs, and I stay faithful to that to this day. 

 

Peter Lindbergh, who works primarily in fashion, directed your video for “Last Party.” Can you tell about working with him? 

 

Well we had done all these pictures for the album and then we had this idea.

What if one of these pictures started singing to you, like a portrait that took it further.

And so that’s what we ended up doing. We did like thirty takes. It was just him and me.

There was a whole team that was coming in between each take to reset, check on everything, and then they would all disappear and it would just be him sitting at the camera.

And it’s so funny—the way he takes pictures is the same way he directs this video…he manipulates people in the best possible way, because even someone who is resistant to it, he can capture them extremely honestly and intimately.

And so with this song that provokes so much imagery, it was fun to contrast it and do something totally pure and simple. 

 

Your first few albums were often deemed as having a “Coming of Age” theme. Has this changed in the new work? 

 

I think it’s more than ever about this kind of growing down in order to grow up.

It takes a really serious person to stay playful.

I think that it’s really right in the heart of this record, that playful quality, that kind of devilish attitude.

Talking about everything from love to politics to my own family and giving myself a license with good humor to say things that I would never normally say.

The others were about coming of age and growing up.

This one’s about growing down in order to grow up properly—in order to stay the same person, you know? Not to slowly extinguish that playfulness that is there much more readily when we’re younger. 

 

Your set features a daunting yet wonderfully whimsical cityscape backdrop, which also appears in your album artwork. How did you fall upon these visuals? 

 

Well one thing leads to another. I would never have thought in the beginning of the design process for the record that I would end up with a city.

But it just works, and the reason why it works is because we based it a lot on visuals from the Futurist Movement in the 1950s and this idea from the title No Place In heaven.

Well, what is heaven? Heaven used to be represented with lakes, rolling green fields, friendly animals everywhere, but now it’s not.

Heaven now is a $180 million dollar apartment in a tall New York building. It’s this kind of urban Elysium that we’re living in and it’s funny because in the old days, that used to represent hell. It did not represent heaven.

What I’m doing is, “Is this really heaven, or is it still hell?”

And playing with all those visuals and using the future in this kind of naïve aesthetic, in order to do that, it opens up a lot of possibilities in that question. 

But it’s funny—one of my favorite pieces of set design ever was for the movie West Side Story.

If you look at the way it’s designed, it’s all about creating this sort of like…the sky is the most valuable piece of real estate, but it’s just squeezed between these buildings that kind of make everyone feel really suppressed and trapped, and they can’t get away from their problems. It’s amazing how powerful those visuals are. 

 

I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something really comforting about your cityscape, even though it is a bit dark. 

 

I agree with you.

It’s pleasing to look at, and you don’t really know why. Because it doesn’t feel childish.

But the good thing is to have really precise reasons for the things you do, but then to have it feel really effortless and just nice to look at.

You don’t know why you like it, you don’t understand what the process is behind it, but at the same time it still works. 

 

What would you like to tell fans before they press play on the new album? 

 

I guess to understand that this record does not compete; it is not trying to compete with radio music.

It’s not trying to compete with any other form of music.

It exists in its own little world. It’s almost like a little show.

You listen to it from beginning to end, and it takes you on a little journey.

That’s why the visuals are so important; it’s to contextualize the music.

So listen to it almost by detaching yourself from what we’re so used to hearing on radio and stuff and just form your own storyline with it.

It’s really quite effective when you listen to it like that.

 

 

 

Love this interview!   Especially the last Q&A !

Edited June 17, 2015 by DongDong

[Lucrezia]

Another interview on US Metro - thanks to Mika's FB

 

 

 

[Kumazzz]

Another interview on US Metro - thanks to Mika's FB

 

 

 

 

page (Page 1).jpg

 

Thanks a lot for posting !

adding to the list http://www.mikafanclub.com/topic/31887-mika-in-us-press-2015/?p=4001867

[Marilyn Mastin]

I'm loving all the US attention. It's brilliant!

Let's hope it translates into album sales in the USA!