Mika is Missing: Fun Fan Theories

[Hero]

2 hours ago, krysady said:

 

I know he said in a early interview from 2007 that he broke himself his nose in two places when he was a child, and he was left with a crooked nose  ... probably some child play accident 

 

Edit: found the article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3666397/Sound-and-vision.html

 

 " I don't gaze at myself in the mirror because when I do I see a lot that is wrong. My nose is crooked. I broke it as a child in two places. Feel it.' He leans forward and I touch the bridge of his nose. There is indeed a crack there. 'And I don't have much of a chin. Just crap. I don't find myself particularly good-looking."

That's so sad.  I hope he's overcome that now. Although I think we all relate, I don't know anyone who looks in a mirror and thinks "mm, yeah!" 

[Paoletta]

 good, well 

[TinyLove_CJ]

1 hour ago, Hero said:

I don't know anyone who looks in a mirror and thinks "mm, yeah!" 

Don't want to go too off topic, but I for one see beauty wherever I have a reflection 😌

 

Either that or I'm just a little bit vain 

 

 

 

[Hero]

40 minutes ago, TinyLove_CJ said:

Don't want to go too off topic, but I for one see beauty wherever I have a reflection 😌

 

Either that or I'm just a little bit vain 

Ah, the confidence of the younger generation.   

[KAMI_83]

5 hours ago, krysady said:

 

 

Editar: encontré el artículo:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3666397/Sound-and-vision.html

 

 

I would like to read it, but it asks me for an account and subscription. Couldn't you send a screenshot of the article? :'( 

[krysady]

6 minutes ago, KAMI_83 said:

I would like to read it, but it asks me for an account and subscription. Couldn't you send a screenshot of the article? :'( 

 

Sure, you can read it here, it's very long so I put it on Spoiler  

 

Spoiler

Art, languages, opera... is there anything Mika hasn't mastered? Yes - getting on with waiters. 'They think I'm the antichrist,' the troubled singer tells Nigel Farndale

Before I meet the pop star, I meet the pop star's older sister. They share good bone structure, wide eyes and an unplaceable accent: a sort of public school mid-Atlantic infused with French wine and Arabian incense. They are both multilingual.

 

 

Their father is an American banker who works mostly in the Gulf. Their mother is a Lebanese clothes designer. They and their three siblings were born in Beirut and raised in Paris, before they all came to settle in London 14 years ago.

The pop star is Mika, the 23-year-old who released a debut album this year which sold a million-and-a-half copies worldwide, and a single, Grace Kelly, which spent five weeks at number one in the British charts. The older sister - she is 27 - is an artist who trades under a name that doesn't suit her clear-skin, dove grey eyes and feminine bearing: DaWack.

Her real name suits her better: Yasmine. I ask whether she finds her younger brother's precociousness annoying. 'Not really,' she says. 'I'm not surprised by his success.

'He's been planning this since he was seven.' She does see it as her job to keep his ego in check, though. 'We keep him in his place. We're a big family. I'll catch his eye when he's playing up and he'll grin as if to say, "I get it. Thanks for reminding me".'

Brother and sister are about to have a joint exhibition of their artwork at the Blink Gallery in London. It includes original paintings, sketches and drawings, some of which were used on Mika's album and single covers.

Although Yasmine never formally trained as an artist - she studied Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London - she has a natural flair, painting in vivid, primary colours in a pop-art style.

Mika does the ideas and the preliminary sketches; she does the painting, working in acrylics. She has assembled some of the exhibition here in a photographer's studio in Fulham, a psychedelic collage of cogs and rainbows which will serve as a backdrop for Mika when he arrives shortly to sit for our photograph.

 

 

'Well everything seemed grey to us when we came to London,' she says, by way of explanation. 'We grew up with colour. Very colourful household. Lots of dramas, the Arabic habit of blowing hot and cold. It's not high art what we do, it's art we created for a purpose, to illustrate this world Mika created around his songs.'

When Mika arrives - real name Michael Penniman - he is wearing yellow-tinted sunglasses, a stripy matelot crew- neck and a brown, hooded jacket with splashes of Glastonbury mud still on it. (He was performing there.)

He is a lean 6ft 4in with an androgynous pout and dark, tumbling pre-Raphaelite curls - Jim Morrison without the scowl. His manner is languid, self-contained and unassuming, and he has a light and rippling laugh.

But when we find a quiet corner to talk, only to compete suddenly with piped music, he shows an assertive side by immediately jumping up and demanding the music be turned off. He returns and sits cross-legged opposite me, grins toothily and sips tea. He drinks alcohol only occasionally, he says, and never, ever does drugs.

'What did my sister say?'

Nothing compromising.

'That surprises me.'

 

 

Mika is a psychologically complex man who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder - he has to buy three of everything, three jackets, three watches - and once he has made up his mind about something he finds it difficult to change it. Bullying blighted his childhood.

He would insist on growing his hair long and wearing a bright yellow bowtie and equally bright red trousers. Things became so bad he had a breakdown at the age of 11 and stopped talking. He also found he could no longer read and write. He was taken out of school for a year and given a private singing coach, an opera teacher from Russia.

But his single-mindedness has served him well, especially where it has been combined with an ambition that is both knowing and coldly businesslike. I ask whether it would be fair to call him pushy. 'I'm controlling and manipulative. In America I have chutzpah; here I am just considered irritating. I just desperately wanted to do this as a job from an early age, that's all. I was serious about it. Really serious.'

He's not kidding. As a child he sang jingles for Wrigley's chewing gum and British Airways. His stage debut was as a chorus member in Richard Strauss's Die Frau Ohne Schatten for the Royal Opera House.

At the age of 15 he attended a family wedding in Connecticut and gatecrashed a neighbour's party because he heard the neighbour was Bob Jamieson, the head of RCA Records. He sat down at a piano and started playing his own songs. 'Kid, you certainly got balls,' the mogul said.

 

 

The following year he blagged his way into Simon Cowell's office and made him listen to a demo he had made. Cowell thought he had a decent voice but his songwriting wasn't good enough. 'You may as well not bother,' Cowell said (and how he must regret being so dismissive now).

Undeterred, Mika next talked his way into the Bee Gees' recording studio in Miami and made a demo free of charge - the engineer he befriended was subsequently sacked for moonlighting on company time.

At 19, he was offered a place to study geography at the LSE, but gave up after one day and enrolled instead at the Royal College of Music. He didn't finish his course because, in 2005, Tommy Mottola, the music mogul who 'discovered' and later married Mariah Carey, heard him play in a hotel and signed him to Casablanca Records. Even before his first single was released, Mika had somehow managed to appear on the much-viewed Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

He writes engaging hooks and amusing lyrics - 'I tried to be like Grace Kelly/But all her looks were too sad/So I tried a little Freddie/I've gone identity mad' - but not everyone has fallen for his music. The Guardian compared listening to his album to 'being held at gunpoint by Bonnie Langford.'

 

 

While funny, that's not fair. He's more Freddie Mercury than Bonnie Langford. It's partly to do with the exotic background - Mercury was born in Zanzibar - as well as the operatic flamboyance on stage: Mika will strut around narcissistically, punch the air and roll his shoulders as he plays the piano.

But it's a lot more to do with his voice, which has a gymnastic four-octave range. He is understandably bored with the comparisons to Freddie Mercury. It's either that or Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters, he says, but he doesn't see it: not unreasonably he considers his voice and his music to be his own.

 

Usually, the music and lyrics come to him at the same time. 'I write at the piano, like Prince. Listen to those big shifts of harmonic mood on Purple Rain. That's because he works it out at the piano.'

It explains much about Grace Kelly, an almost honky-tonk piano arrangement combined with an insanely catchy lyric, 'Why don't you like me?' He grins sheepishly when I ask about this. 'I have to admit it was based slightly on The Barber of Seville.'

He mimes being at keyboard and sings the famous 'Figaro, Figaro' motif as 'di-di-diddly, di-di-diddly, di-di-diddly, dum-di-dum.'

Of course, I say. I thought it reminded me of something. And why not? It's out of copyright. When he writes his songs he has his sketch book on one side of the keyboard and his lyric book on the other. 'And my television is always on. All day. I watch everything from Trisha to Hollyoaks. It's all the same process.

 

 

There is much scope for Freudian interpretation in his art, I note, what with the floating keys, clocks and snakes. 'In my lyrics, too,' he says. 'Some are conscious, some aren't. I draw in the same way I write lyrics. Sometimes I don't even know what I've written until I re-read them later and think, wow, yeah, oh, that's really funny, because I'm not a very funny person.'

I ask whether his urge to create the art that accompanies his music is a nod towards Wagner. 'Gesamtkunstwerk,' he says. 'Total art. That's it exactly. I'm a big collector of toy theatres. I find it amazing that a megalomaniac, self-obsessed, control-freak dreamer like Wagner could have designed a theatre himself.

'Such an impractical theatre, too. But I don't really consider myself a Wagnerian. For me it's not about controlling so much as saying, why not? It would have broken my heart if someone else had come in and designed the artwork for my CD sleeve.'

Does he worry that people might think him pretentious and mock him for being a pop star who thinks he's an artist? 'You can't worry about being teased. I'm used to it. I have been teased my whole life. I'm thick-skinned and I don't worry about it. I do things because they feel right and it's organic. Just because the outcome is commercially viable pop music shouldn't mean I'm judged or stigmatised for it.'

Quite so, and now we are on the subject of teasing and bullying. His family moved to London when he was nine. The move followed a traumatic episode for him in which he thought he would never see his father again.

On the night Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, his father was on a business trip to Kuwait City. He took refuge in the American embassy and was stranded there as a hostage for six months before the allies liberated the city.

 

Mika, meanwhile, was sent to the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, and later Westminster School, but wherever he went he was bullied. 'They used to throw things at me and call me a f---ing poof.'

Because he was effeminate? 'Yes, though I never considered myself effeminate.'

And then he became so traumatised he stopped talking? 'Only for a little while. Worse was when I stopped reading and writing. That was baaad. I couldn't even write the name of my school.

'It was weird because at seven I could sight-read, then all my problems with dyslexia started. To this day I cannot sight-read. Cannot spell properly. My verbal IQ is high but my written IQ...' he laughs. 'I had to have this certificate to get into the Royal College of Music to prove I wasn't just lazy.'

How does he reconcile these emotionally crippling formative incidents with his obvious confidence and self-belief today? 'I'm not that confident. I'm confident when we sit here and talk on our own, or when I'm performing on stage.

'I don't have much confidence when I walk into a room. Put me back in school and I'd be bullied all over again. Lock us in a classroom and we would be fine for a couple of hours because they would all be talking about me being in the charts and all that, but by the third hour I guarantee the bullying would all start happening again.'

Has he ever thought of confronting his bullies now, as a way of laying those ghosts to rest? 'No way. I have come across them but... Do I like them now? No, I can't stand them. I didn't do this for them, though.

 

'That would be to give them far too much credit. People don't change. It's Lord of the Flies. I hated that book. Still do. Horrible. Vile. Animalistic. The bullies can't bear anyone being different.'

In retrospect, does he think he might have given them ammunition by dressing the way he did? 'No, the bullying would have happened anyway. It was out of control. I was even picked on by one of my teachers, a female teacher.'

Why does he suppose she did that? 'I don't know. I didn't provoke her. I wasn't the first and I imagine I wasn't the last she picked on. She was just a nasty piece of work.

'I wasn't brave. I was not a fighter in the classroom. I lost. I was lame. I admit it. I saw myself more as the slow and stubborn turtle who quietly got on with what he was doing, knowing I would one day win the race.'

It is easy to imagine Mika retreating into a fantasy world at home, with his imagined world of cartoon characters. It is telling that his album is called 'Life in Cartoon Motion'.

There is, after all, an air of arrested development about him - the man-child who missed out on his childhood because he was too focused on having an adult career, like Michael Jackson. Was the art about escapism, I ask? 'It represented a fantasy world punctured with ambition, because I was lucky enough to be working at an early age.'

 

 

To this day he sometimes feels he rubs people up the wrong way. 'I think it is to do with being dyslexic. When I walk into a restaurant I always have a lot of problems with waiters. They think I'm the Antichrist. I never understand why. I think I must communicate in a different way.

'It's a social awkwardness. I think I am being perfectly normal and polite but they think I'm being a ****. It causes problems. Maybe that was the problem with my teacher. I'd get really excited and happy about something then I'd turn round in the classroom and find everyone was laughing at me.'

As Bob Monkhouse used to say, they're not laughing now. The once precocious and friendless child now finds that as a successful adult everyone wants to be his friend. Do sycophants surround him? 'It is there, it can happen. What has changed in the past year is that when you meet someone new the first few moments of a conversation...' He trails off. 'But people very quickly relax. I impose a certain harshness of tone to get rid of that crap as fast as I can.'

Does he think his fame has made it harder for him to have personal relationships? 'No, I'm very lucky. I have a set group of friends. They are very understanding. They all came to Glastonbury. All the [people dressed as] animals on stage were my friends. They go around the world with me.'

He plays up to the speculation about his sexuality. He says his name is unisex, one size fits all: 'Because sexuality in pop is genderless and that's the joy of it.'

While his sexuality may be ambiguous, it is not that ambiguous. He's a Barbra Streisand fan, for one thing, and is wont to say camp things such as: 'I feel like some Broadway Jewish mother. I just push and push and push.' Also he recently did a cover of Shakira's Hips Don't Lie in which he sang both the male and female roles.

 

 

And one of his songs, Billy Brown, is about a straight man who suddenly falls in love with another man. My hunch is he is either asexual or bisexual, even if he himself isn't yet sure which.

Has he ever been to a therapist? 'No, not at all, no way.'

Because he thinks he is well adjusted?

'No, because your flaws make you what you are. If you iron things out, what will you be left with? It's the imbalances that give us our character traits. It would be very boring if we were all the same genetically and conformed to the same configuration, the Golden Numbers, the perfect proportions of people's faces.'

He explains that there is a mathematically calculable set of proportions that make up the perfect face, which is why we all tend to find the same people attractive. It's a certain symmetry and Mika seems to have it. Earlier this year he was given a lucrative modelling contract when he became the face of Paul Smith's spring/summer collection.

He doesn't consider himself vain, though. 'Actually I'm quite defensive about my looks. Not vain at all. I don't gaze at myself in the mirror because when I do I see a lot that is wrong. My nose is crooked. I broke it as a child in two places. Feel it.' He leans forward and I touch the bridge of his nose. There is indeed a crack there. 'And I don't have much of a chin. Just crap. I don't find myself particularly good-looking.'

Nevertheless, his looks have made him money. When I ask whether he is good at managing it, he laughs: 'I don't have enough to manage yet. It is more about making sure I have enough to pay my taxes.

'Actually, with the money, I have collected illustration art: Tony Millionaire's comic book cards and Jim Woodring watercolours. And I have redone my basement flat.'

 

 

We continue talking as he goes off to have a wet shave at a sink in preparation for the photograph. A half-shave. He likes a bit of designer stubble in photographs. Guilelessly he tells me as he shaves that he's having his kitchen refitted and the company doing it said they would give him a discount if he posed for a photograph next to his new units, for their brochure. 'I thought, why not?' he says with his rippling laugh.

Why not, indeed, Mika. Why not indeed.

Toonsmith - The art of Mika:

'I started on the visual side of my work before I had even done a demo of the music. I had help from a photographer called Simon Weller. Simon designed a logo and we put together this thing which looked like it had had £50,000 spent on it when actually it was me and my sister cutting out pieces of black cardboard and scoring them so we could fold them.

'We were just guarding ourselves against someone else dictating my image. It started with characters such as Billy Brown, Lollipop Girl, and Big Girl. I drew them for my website and my sister added to them and made them flow.

'My drawings are messy and dark but I think they do represent a certain visual language. I had this cartoon idea. A cartoon has to work in 10 seconds and so does a pop song. The lyrics and the melody can both be quite simple - it is in the combination of the two that the expression lies.

 

 

'The picture sleeve for the CD pulls out. Billy is on top of this domestic pile of psychedelic couches. It then pulls out again to reveal this wheel design, inner circles of tiny images of Billy sitting on the loo, being spit-roasted, going to the disco, burning down his house, in rehab, throwing up, having a part-time job as a dog walker. You know, little narratives about his life.

'I wanted a soft release for the album's first single, Relax, and the art was important to that. When you have a record company behind you it is so easy to go for theat big Asda push. Suddenly you are in everyone's face in the most buyable locations, and there is immediate mistrust.

'You become disposable if you market yourself that way. You have to give it time to find out who your audience can be. We made 600 vinyls. I said, "Let us do as though we are the Flaming Lips or Lemon Jelly: put out a beautifully designed little 7-inch which will never have a chance of recouping its costs." It would have a pull-out, and a release online.

'All we would do for it would be a poster campaign and that was just a painting from the single artwork. All they had was my name written small at the bottom, no release date. I knew because of the saturation of the colours it would splash.'

 

 

 

[Mikasister]

So he's in Paris now, right?

[mellody]

2 hours ago, Mikasister said:

So he's in Paris now, right?

 

Looking at Clement's and Vincent's Insta stories, it seems his band is in Cannes. At least Clement tagged Vincent, Max, Wouter and some of the technicians we know from last year's tour, inviting them to an afterparty.

Edited January 14, 2023 by mellody

[Kumazzz]

Is it tonight in Cannes ???

 

 

[mellody]

21 minutes ago, Kumazzz said:

Is it tonight in Cannes ???

 

 

 

Yes. If you look on the guy's Instagram, he has a story from Palais de Festivals in Cannes, and searching for that place, a short clip of Lollipop comes up: (there's also a clip of Big Girl in this person's stories)

 

 

 

 

 

Sieh dir diesen Beitrag auf Instagram an

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ein Beitrag geteilt von Arnaud Ngs (@arnaud_ngs)

 

[Kumazzz]

Thanks @mellody

 

IG story

https://www.instagram.com/stories/arnaud_ngs/3015841874891848862/

Palais des Festivals, Cannes

 

Big Girl

 

 

[Kumazzz]

https://www.instagram.com/alexandraseux/

IG stories

 

Love Today

 

 

Grace Kelly

 

 

Underwater

 

 

[Kumazzz]

Mika at Cannes

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnbv2zbIZ3W/

Ice Cream

 

 

Elle Me Dit

https://www.instagram.com/p/CnbwZ3yo5w3/

 

 

 

 

[BeccaStardust]

37 minutes ago, Kumazzz said:

Mika at Cannes

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnbv2zbIZ3W/

Ice Cream

 

 

Elle Me Dit

https://www.instagram.com/p/CnbwZ3yo5w3/

 

 

 

 

The kid has no idea what's going on, mikas trying to have him enjoy himself tho 

[Mikasister]

Do we know what company or brand  the private gig was for? 

[Anna Ko Kolkowska]

3 minutes ago, Mikasister said:

Do we know what company or brand  the private gig was for? 

Point S. Tires producer I think.

[Paoletta]

 thank you so much 

[holdingyourdrink]

6 hours ago, Kumazzz said:

Mika at Cannes

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnbv2zbIZ3W/

Ice Cream

 

 

First of all, I really like his hair this way, it’s my favourite cut on him: short on the sides/back and long on top. All the bouncy curls! 
 

Secondly, if he would ever come so close to grab my phone to take with him, I think I would die  (yes we have wayyyy surpassed the act of fainting)

[Hero]

5 hours ago, holdingyourdrink said:

Secondly, if he would ever come so close to grab my phone to take with him, I think I would die  (yes we have wayyyy surpassed the act of fainting)

*throws away the smelling salts, and invests in a defibrillator*

 

Just in case. 

[mellody]

4 hours ago, holdingyourdrink said:

First of all, I really like his hair this way, it’s my favourite cut on him: short on the sides/back and long on top. All the bouncy curls! 

 

Fluff!  I'm glad that he didn't let Geraldine cut his hair for that gig. 

 

7 hours ago, holdingyourdrink said:

Secondly, if he would ever come so close to grab my phone to take with him, I think I would die  (yes we have wayyyy surpassed the act of fainting)

 

Nah you wouldn't, because then you'd miss the gig.  Maybe afterwards, when looking at the recording he made.

[holdingyourdrink]

8 hours ago, mellody said:

Nah you wouldn't, because then you'd miss the gig.  Maybe afterwards, when looking at the recording he made.

The most special thing about these recordings (in the few times that it was posted and we could enjoy as well!) is that you hear him sing from very close, off mic. I love his voice the most when he sings live (as opposed to the studio recording). So to hear that from up THAT close is very very special. 

[dcdeb]

5 hours ago, holdingyourdrink said:

The most special thing about these recordings (in the few times that it was posted and we could enjoy as well!) is that you hear him sing from very close, off mic. I love his voice the most when he sings live (as opposed to the studio recording). So to hear that from up THAT close is very very special. 

 

Straying a bit off-topic here, but that is what stunned us the first time we heard him sing off-mic live (and I say "us" because there were several of us there at the time). It was back in April 2013 at the Sixth and I Synagogue here in DC. Very small gig, intimate, and we were seated right near the stage, which was elevated fairly high. First he tried singing Lola, which went off well, to put it mildly.

 

 

Then, emboldened by that, he sang Stardust off-mic a few seconds later. I think I held my breath through the entire song, it was so magical. We could just feel his voice gently raining down on us, washing over us... we couldn't believe how amazing it was to actually hear his voice, unfiltered, not enhanced by any microphone or special effects. It was unbelievable

 

 

It was much later, months or maybe even a few years, before he started singing the end of Happy Ending off-mic -- I don't remember the first time he tried that.

 

Anyway... when @holdingyourdrink mentioned hearing his voice up close, that triggered a memory, so I just wanted to share those videos for those who hadn't seen them yet.

 

I'll shut up now and let you get back on topic!

[Anna Ko Kolkowska]

12 minutes ago, dcdeb said:

 

Straying a bit off-topic here, but that is what stunned us the first time we heard him sing off-mic live (and I say "us" because there were several of us there at the time). It was back in April 2013 at the Sixth and I Synagogue here in DC. Very small gig, intimate, and we were seated right near the stage, which was elevated fairly high. First he tried singing Lola, which went off well, to put it mildly.

 

 

Then, emboldened by that, he sang Stardust off-mic a few seconds later. I think I held my breath through the entire song, it was so magical. We could just feel his voice gently raining down on us, washing over us... we couldn't believe how amazing it was to actually hear his voice, unfiltered, not enhanced by any microphone or special effects. It was unbelievable

 

 

It was much later, months or maybe even a few years, before he started singing the end of Happy Ending off-mic -- I don't remember the first time he tried that.

 

Anyway... when @holdingyourdrink mentioned hearing his voice up close, that triggered a memory, so I just wanted to share those videos for those who hadn't seen them yet.

 

I'll shut up now and let you get back on topic!

Thank you very much Deb for posting.

I've seen those videos long time ago and it's a real pleasure to watch them again.

 

In Stardust we can see how his technique of singing is changing when he gives up the mic....

 

I remember my first concert in La Cigale. I was in the second row and when Mika was closer I could hear his real voice as well. It was mesmerizing!!!!! 

[Hero]

56 minutes ago, dcdeb said:

 

Straying a bit off-topic here, but that is what stunned us the first time we heard him sing off-mic live (and I say "us" because there were several of us there at the time). It was back in April 2013 at the Sixth and I Synagogue here in DC. Very small gig, intimate, and we were seated right near the stage, which was elevated fairly high. First he tried singing Lola, which went off well, to put it mildly.

 

 

Then, emboldened by that, he sang Stardust off-mic a few seconds later. I think I held my breath through the entire song, it was so magical. We could just feel his voice gently raining down on us, washing over us... we couldn't believe how amazing it was to actually hear his voice, unfiltered, not enhanced by any microphone or special effects. It was unbelievable

 

 

It was much later, months or maybe even a few years, before he started singing the end of Happy Ending off-mic -- I don't remember the first time he tried that.

 

Anyway... when @holdingyourdrink mentioned hearing his voice up close, that triggered a memory, so I just wanted to share those videos for those who hadn't seen them yet.

 

I'll shut up now and let you get back on topic!

Wowwwww, thank you Deb! Fantastic!

 

57 minutes ago, PoodleSnow said:

Turning this to a topic. I’d dream my luck has turned and he’s right now secretly in Finland having a privet concert, somewhere close enough from me. 

Noo, not a private gig! But a super special exclusive gig only for MFC. 

[holdingyourdrink]

7 hours ago, dcdeb said:

 

Straying a bit off-topic here, but that is what stunned us the first time we heard him sing off-mic live (and I say "us" because there were several of us there at the time). It was back in April 2013 at the Sixth and I Synagogue here in DC. Very small gig, intimate, and we were seated right near the stage, which was elevated fairly high. First he tried singing Lola, which went off well, to put it mildly.

 

 

Then, emboldened by that, he sang Stardust off-mic a few seconds later. I think I held my breath through the entire song, it was so magical. We could just feel his voice gently raining down on us, washing over us... we couldn't believe how amazing it was to actually hear his voice, unfiltered, not enhanced by any microphone or special effects. It was unbelievable

 

 

It was much later, months or maybe even a few years, before he started singing the end of Happy Ending off-mic -- I don't remember the first time he tried that.

 

Anyway... when @holdingyourdrink mentioned hearing his voice up close, that triggered a memory, so I just wanted to share those videos for those who hadn't seen them yet.

 

I'll shut up now and let you get back on topic!

Love. This. (!!!!)
 

Him using the audience as a choir, his voice! HIS VOICE!!! Gently raining down on you…..to then smack you off your feet like a bolt of thunder. Wow. I can only imagine what it must’ve been like to hear that live. I was holding my breath (not a drink this time!) watching it. THANK YOU for sharing, that’s amazing, can he do it again!? Please!?