My Name Is Michael Holbrook - Mika's new album 2019

[ellie]

Was this review posted before? It is the fairest imo.

 

https://www.popmatters.com/mika-my-name-michael-holbrook-2640966941.html

 

Mika Delivers Undeniably Catchy Hooks on 'My Name Is Michael Holbrook'

 

My Name Is Michael Holbrook, the fifth album by the English pop singer Mika, opens with the following lines:

 

It's not a sunrise over canyons shaped like hearts
It isn't bursting into song in Central Park
It's not the outline of your face drawn in the stars
It's a "still-there-Monday-morning" kind of love

 

In just these few lyrics, the point of "Tiny Love" becomes clear. Mika, for all of his global fame and success, wants a loving relationship whose virtues are the small things. At first, the song seems deeply ironic; when you think of Mika, you think of songs like "Grace Kelly", "Underwater", and "Happy Ending", all songs which fall squarely into the "sunrise over canyons shaped like hearts" mold of songwriting. Any of Mika's studio records, with little modification, could be transformed into a jukebox musical as big as any that have graced Broadway stages. Mika's choice to distance himself from such grandeur – even though the arrangement of "Tiny Love" is as Queen-indebted as any tune of his we've heard before – indicates, along with the title My Name is Michael Holbrook itself, that he's perhaps taking a turn for the more introspective and personal.

 

In a key post-chorus of "Tiny Love", Mika seems like he may be doing just that. The bombastic pop instrumentation that makes up the bulk of the track drops out, leaving only Mika and a gently played piano. "My name is Mika Holbrook / I was born in 1983", he states, "No, I'm not losing my mind / It's just this thing that you do to me / You get me high on a tiny love." The inclusion of those two biographical details is interesting. No one familiar with his music would mistake "Tiny Love" for anything but a Mika tune, and the year 1983 doesn't get much mention elsewhere, except in the frequent call-outs to 1980s pop throughout My Name is Michael Holbrook. Yet in the context of "Tiny Love", this confessional moment works. It's a reminder that beneath all the maximalist songwriting and theatricality that defines Mika's music, there's still an ordinary man underneath it all. My Name is Michael Holbrook gestures toward something like the mid-career self-titled LP, a chance for an artist to take stock of his work and what it all means.

 

What unfolds throughout My Name Is Michael Holbrook's 13 songs is, well, not quite that. The record follows the path laid out by 2015's No Place in Heaven, to date Mika's strongest studio affair. My Name Is Michael Holbrook is polished, stadium-ready pop that appeals to a wide range of listeners. Mark Crew, a relatively young producer whose track record consists of work with UK pop and electronic acts like Bastille and Calvin Harris, lacquers nearly every single track on this LP, which keeps with how most of Mika's music has sounded in the past. On the soaring, radio-ready choruses of "Platform Ballerinas" and "Tomorrow", Crew and co-producer Dan Priddy ensure that the arrangements are reduced to their purest and cleanest expressions, which allows Mika's beautiful melodies to shine.

 

As much as this pristine production flows naturally from Mika's songwriting style, it also flattens out the music in noticeable places. Even in the case of a pop singer like Mika, whose music feels of a piece with the way most top 40 artists are produced nowadays, production like My Name is Michael Holbrook's risks smoothing out edges that are at times needed to introduce sonic contrast and variety. The heartbreaking lyrical narrative of the piano ballad "Paloma", in which Mika recounts the night that his sister nearly died after falling off of her fourth-floor balcony, would have been better served by spare production and arrangement, ideally just Mika and the piano. A gentle drumbeat and some perfunctory strings which emerge in the second chorus add too much gloss to a tune whose beauty exists in its simple poignancy.

 

This kind of production does work brilliantly, however, on the show-stopping duet with Jack Savoretti midway through the album, ''Ready to call this love''. A somewhat different production issue crops up with ''Sanremo''. It's a suave tropical number with an excellent chorus that's undercut by a generic pad synth/clap beat instrumental that sounds like the backing music to a promotional video for a Mediterranean cruise. In these two songs and other places on My Name Is Michael Holbrook ("Stay High", the remix-demanding "Dear Jealousy"), the songwriting is sharp, but the production doesn't match it.

 

Edit: This doesnt fit into one post oops

 

Edited October 16, 2019 by ellie

[Mikasister]

44 minutes ago, Marika said:

Today for the first time I read the lyrics in his booklet, coming with the CD. Even though my English is not that good, I was shocked by the typos and grammatical mistakes! Especially in I went to hell last night. Sometimes it's written as God and sometimes as god. One sentence 'Wwhen your dark and your sad.' Double w in when and constant your instead of you're. This also comes back in platform ballerinas. And in cry a whole sentence was on the wrong place. 

 

Did anyone else see this too? Who wrote these lyrics in the booklet of the CD? 

 

To tell you the truth, I haven't even looked at the lyrics in the booklet. 

[ellie]

3 hours ago, Mikasister said:

There's something in Mika I just did not understand. I do not know if it is the record label, the management or he who does not just fit into today's musical world.

I'm thinking for example in Adele, she "breathes" releases a new album and it sounds everywhere. All her songs are on the radios day after day. Her videos are seen everywhere, at least in Spain, even wins lots of Grammys   and I wonder, are her songs better than Mika's songs?  I dont think so. 

This is reality, something I will never understand. Mika has very, very good songs and in Spain he has many fans but there is some mechanism that fails and I don't think it's just the lack of promotion

 

Adele is an english speaking singer based in UK while Mika is an english speaking singer based in France/Italy - no one is really looking at continental Europe for english songs  

[ellie]

1 hour ago, giraffeandy said:

I'm also very disappointed by the booklet this time to be honest, it seems like it was made in a rush even though they had quite a lot of time to do it better...  Also there aren't any pics, I was bit surprised by that as I was used that Mika's booklets always had beautiful artworks even when the lyrics were missing there.

 

It looked like he had the artwork ready since may though so I dont get what happened here, the whole booklet looks fanmade

[giraffeandy]

11 minutes ago, ellie said:

 

It looked like he had the artwork ready since may though so I dont get what happened here, the whole booklet looks fanmade

 

Also I think he once said there'll be artworks similar to the album cover for every single and then after Ice Cream and Tiny Love the other singles were released only with the album cover... 

[ellie]

53 minutes ago, giraffeandy said:

 

Also I think he once said there'll be artworks similar to the album cover for every single and then after Ice Cream and Tiny Love the other singles were released only with the album cover... 

 

Yeah, and that he will have a dozen of dancers on tour and his music videos will be experimental films not promo videos

[silver]

3 hours ago, Marika said:

Today for the first time I read the lyrics in his booklet, coming with the CD. Even though my English is not that good, I was shocked by the typos and grammatical mistakes! Especially in I went to hell last night. Sometimes it's written as God and sometimes as god. One sentence 'Wwhen your dark and your sad.' Double w in when and constant your instead of you're. This also comes back in platform ballerinas. And in cry a whole sentence was on the wrong place. 

 

Did anyone else see this too? Who wrote these lyrics in the booklet of the CD? 

 

2 hours ago, giraffeandy said:

 

 

Also the outro of Paloma is missing in the booklet and Tiny Love Reprise is completely wrong, especially the part of Mika's mum, the whole verse is different... Sometimes it's only one word but still, it changes the meaning a lot. I'm also very disappointed by the booklet this time to be honest, it seems like it was made in a rush even though they had quite a lot of time to do it better...  Also there aren't any pics, I was bit surprised by that as I was used that Mika's booklets always had beautiful artworks even when the lyrics were missing there.

 

We have long despaired about the lyrics for Mika's songs, the published ones quite often don't match what he actually sings (same goes for the lyrics accompanying the videos).

 

I have wondered if Mika writes lyrics, then changes them during the course of recording as he discovers what works best, but fails to submit the amended lyrics to whoever produces the booklet.  Or if transcribing the lyrics gets left to someone who can't hear (or spell) properly.

 

We've offered to help, but no-one has taken up the offer.  The best place to look for the correct versions is our own Comprehensive Lyrics thread.

[Florine]

I was a little bit disappointed about the booklet too. I was surprised to see there's ni pictures of him or any photoshoot for the promo of the album. Also it's a little but confusing to see some mistakes inside the lyrics !!

[giraffeandy]

1 hour ago, ellie said:

 

Yeah, and that he will have a dozen of dancers on tour and his music videos will be experimental films not promo videos

 

I've read porno videos at first... 

[krysady]

1 hour ago, ellie said:

Yeah, and that he will have a dozen of dancers on tour

Thank god that he changed his mind 

[Florine]

2 minutes ago, krysady said:

Thank god that he changed his mind 

Agree !! Mika is the show itself. He don't need dancers or anything else. He's the show!!

[krysady]

1 minute ago, Florine said:

Agree !! Mika is the show itself. He don't need dancers or anything else. He's the show!!

Exactly, that was definitely not his style! 

[ellie]

7 minutes ago, krysady said:

Thank god that he changed his mind 

 

4 minutes ago, Florine said:

Agree !! Mika is the show itself. He don't need dancers or anything else. He's the show!!

 

I think we're all on the same page here

[Florine]

18 minutes ago, ellie said:

 

 

I think we're all on the same page here

 

 

to be honnest, as much as I love music and dance in globality, when I'm at a Mika's show I have eyes for him and him only !!🤣

[Sabine64]

I think Mika did the mistakes on purpose in the  booklet as he is dyslectic and never tried to hide the fact. Yes the booklet is in a different style but I really like the cover. 

[Starlight]

2 hours ago, Florine said:

Agree !! Mika is the show itself. He don't need dancers or anything else. He's the show!!

I also think that.  He doesn't need a big show to impress. We already love him the way he is. He's incredibly talented and his voice is enough to make it a great show for us.

2 hours ago, Florine said:

 

 

to be honnest, as much as I love music and dance in globality, when I'm at a Mika's show I have eyes for him and him only !!🤣

[mellody]

 

5 hours ago, ellie said:

 

It looked like he had the artwork ready since may though so I dont get what happened here, the whole booklet looks fanmade

 

Fans would do a better job!  And no, @Sabine64, I don't think Mika did that himself, he has better things to do. And he'd have no problem to write "whore" instead of "heart".  I agree though, the cover looks great.

Maybe Mika left the texts for the record label to do, and they had an intern take care of it. In any case it obviously hasn't been proofread. Also in the credits something is missing, iirc it was the writing credits for Platform Ballerinas.

[ellie]

18 minutes ago, Sabine64 said:

I think Mika did the mistakes on purpose in the  booklet as he is dyslectic and never tried to hide the fact. Yes the booklet is in a different style but I really like the cover. 

 

Lol thats a reach, Ive never seen Mika confusing words in english and Im pretty sure he said he has problems with handwritting not typing. If the mistakes in the booklet are meant to show he is dyslexic then thats a poorly done job cuz it doesnt mimic his issues

[MatanBenYosef224]

Finally,  There is a review about the album in a Hebrew site. Well it's rare too see anything about him in Israel so I'm happy to see it! I'm translating it to english using google translate: 

 

MIKA, My Name Is Michael Holbrook 

Mika is one of the most amazing melodists in pop world. In "Life In Cartoon Motion", his 2007 debut album, Each track is loaded with its own unique and energetic energy of Freddie Mercury vocals, a combination that creates a style of uplifting and refreshing fun. I listen to Mika's fifth studio album, and relish almost as much as the first time. The name of the album- My Name Is Michael Holbrook, may hint at a completely personal theme, and yet the songs sound universal. It offers two extremes of the romantic arc, tracks such as 'Tiny Love', between grandiose romantic gestures and a kind of affection that feels grounded and realistic. Alternatively, in "Ice Cream," he sings about "The Tap Continues to Drip," or the sexual instincts that connect to synth sounds that revert to pops of the '80s and' 90s.

Since the release of Life In Cartoon Motion, his presence on the sales parade tables has been declining, even the arrival of his second album "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" into the top ten in the UK has not improved his commercial standing. It is unclear if the new album has greater odds, what is more clear is that it is restoring the essence of Mika's first two albums. It also has exceptions like the rhythmic "Platform Ballerinas" that sounds like a career change. The song deals with the beauty standards set by the company, and expectations look perfect 24/7. The song celebrates female individuality in funky pop dance pop in the best of the seventies-eighties decorated with palettes and upgraded female harmonies.

Although Mika usually shows a loud scream, this time he was also heard in melancholy tones as in "Paloma," a song about his sister, who in 2010 fell out of a window and suffered life-threatening injuries. He describes her as angel, before being thrown out of the sky with an emotionally unfamiliar tone. His (Mika) "moody" mood also stands out in "Blue" - the color connotations that are confusing. Some will say that Mika is more successful in the sunlight temperamental songs and less in the dark songs.

One thing can be agreed: when Mika radiates his unbridled positivity, not many pop artists are able to get close to his complex, inspiring music like the songs on this album, just about everything that pop is looking for - melodic, harmonious combination of R-N-B, synthesized sound . Rarely does he go for the fashionable. Instead Mika again chooses pop music that stands by itself without a time test.

4.5/5 

 

https://www.yosmusic.com/מיקה-mika-my-name-is-michael-holbrook/

 

[silver]

I meant to comment on the Popmatters review yesterday: I'm in agreement with the writer as I feel that the biggest problem with the album is the production.  And a lot of the drumming is what I call "cocktail lounge" drumming - just there and not really adding anything to the song.

[NancylovesM]

Did anyone receive their copy of the CD from your concert ticket purchase?. I'm still waiting here in Toronto, almost ready to give up. 

 

Edit: I just reread the email, it says delivery up to 15 business days.  I guess it's only been 10.  I won't give up quite yet. 

Edited October 18, 2019 by NancylovesM

[kreacher]

7 minutes ago, NancylovesM said:

Did anyone receive their copy of the CD from your concert ticket purchase?. I'm still waiting here in Toronto, almost ready to give up. 

 

I got mine a couple days ago, but the one I had them send to my sister hasn’t gotten to her yet, so don’t give up hope! The email they sent after I submitted my address said it should ship in 7-10 days after the release. I never got an email saying it actually shipped.

Edited October 18, 2019 by kreacher

[NancylovesM]

1 hour ago, kreacher said:

 

I got mine a couple days ago, but the one I had them send to my sister hasn’t gotten to her yet, so don’t give up hope! The email they sent after I submitted my address said it should ship in 7-10 days after the release. I never got an email saying it actually shipped.

Ok.  I haven't received a "shipped" email yet.  Being in Canada, I expect a bit of a delay, but hopefully not too long!!. Thanks.

[cathouzouf]

8 hours ago, NancylovesM said:

Did anyone receive their copy of the CD from your concert ticket purchase?. I'm still waiting here in Toronto, almost ready to give up. 

 

Edit: I just reread the email, it says delivery up to 15 business days.  I guess it's only been 10.  I won't give up quite yet. 

got my 2 today 😉

[NancylovesM]

2 hours ago, cathouzouf said:

got my 2 today 😉

Oh good!! Hopefully mine will arrive sooooon 🤞🤞🤞