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Oh,Mika, you're so fine! Dec 06 Sunday Times Article

meimei88

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meimei88

meimei88

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Morning everyone - not sure if this has already been posted.. have done a qiuck search of the forums and couldn't find it.. so here it is.. an article from back in December 06

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/newspapers/sunday_times/style/article648242.ece

 

Sorry if it has already!! :naughty:

 

From The Sunday Times December 03, 2006

 

Oh, Mika, you're so fine

If you haven’t heard of him yet, don’t worry - you will soon. Mika is Paul Smith’s global face of 2007, and pop superstardom is just around the corner. Johnny Davis meets him

 

His public may not know it yet, but Mika, a 23-year-old Lebanese Londoner, is Britain’s brightest new pop star. “The response I’m getting is amazing,†he says, somewhat immodestly for a man who has yet to sell a CD. “But I’m not surprised. I’ve been planning this all my life.â€Â

Mika releases his first album of knowing agit-pop only in February, but on MySpace, there is a fever of expectation not witnessed since just before Lily Allen made it big. His on-stage charisma is such that comparisons are being made to Freddie Mercury.

 

Last year, he scooped record deals on both sides of the Atlantic, and he has just been chosen as the extremely pretty face of Paul Smith’s 2007 global ad campaign. In America, he has been picked up by Tommy Mottola, former mentor to Mariah Carey and one of the music industry’s most respected players. “In greatness, he could achieve what Bowie or Robbie or Elton has achieved,†Mottola says. “He’s in the league of those gentlemen.†Indeed, there is something almost surreal about the certainty of Mika’s fame.

 

Today, wearing flared jeans and pointy tan shoes, he is the lunchtime guest on BBC London’s light-entertainment programme. He thunders his way through Billy Brown, about a man who abandons his family to embark on a gay affair. “Well, a song about a man abandoning his family for another man. I don’t think that’s been done too many times on national radio before,†he says.

 

Mika is all about doing things that haven’t been done too many times before. He’s a trained opera singer, and gave his first public performance at the Royal Opera House

 

aged 11. And he’s got the sort of beauty  the sculpted face and tumbling locks of a Michelangelo figure  that will have middle-aged women queuing up to mother him, and their daughters wanting to, well, go shopping with him. But it’s there that the similarities with the pop-opera band Il Divo end. When fame finally hits, it will be because there is only one Mika.

 

His style of stage artistry arrives with immaculate timing, as the British public is buying Scissor Sisters albums by the barrel-load and finding room for flamboyant acts such as Rufus Wainwright. “I’m far more anarchic than any band in Camden right now,†he says. “And people are gagging for it. It’s a reaction to overcorporate 1990s pop and the snobbery of the indie scene.â€Â

 

He’s right. Not since the 1980s, when Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Kate Bush were in the charts, has pop had such creative potential. Now, with acts such as the harp-playing singer-songwriter Patrick Wolf, the Sao Paulo art/design/ dance band CSS and the Gossip (the Arkansas three-piece whose lead singer, Beth Ditto, is a large lesbian with an inclination towards slipping off her clothes on stage and holding forth on gay marriage), a new wave of young musicians is reinventing the genre.

 

The young songwriters and performers who make up this countercultural pop movement are a far more grass-roots bunch than the Identikit, manufactured bands that have defined the industry over the past decade. Styled up to the max  think pop socks and wife-beaters for CSS, hot pants for the 15-stone Ditto, who has just topped the NME’s cool list, and an extraordinary confection of silver lamé and fluoro sportswear by the avant-garde east-London fashion designer Cassette Playa for Wolf  they see as anathema the notion of doing anything anyone’s way but their own. Full to the brim with ironic knowingness, they are here to remind us that the sort of vapid pop by numbers offered up by television talent contests and cynical music impresarios isn’t the only kind there is.

 

And they are nothing if not sure of their own minds. One record-company suit, misguided enough to attempt to mould Mika into “the new Craig Davidâ€Â, even inspired a song on his album. “Should I bend over?†he asks on Grace Kelly, in protest at the idea of being in any way moulded. Another track, Big Girl (You Are Beautiful), is a broadside against size-zero foolishness. There is a awareness to his songs that earlier generations of pop rebels didn’t have. They are savvy about the marketing machine, wily about the mechanics and pitfalls of celebrity. “I’m delighted if people take that idea from what I do,†Mika says. “But I detach myself from politics or any kind of particular angle. Who I am isn’t important.â€Â

 

Mostly, however what he and his peers really, really are is ambitious. Mika began bagging commercial work, packaging up demo cassettes and hitting the phones, from the age of 11. “Important people would take my calls simply because I was a kid. My mum had no idea.†Thus, the young Mika ended up singing on adverts for Wrigley chewing gum and the Kuwaiti Danish Dairy Co, and providing British Airways with in-flight music.

 

Mika’s still got it covered. His name is a single-word, global-fame-friendly brand that will be easy to say in 15 languages. “Well, there’s no need to tell you my surname,†he says. “My name is unisex. One size fits all. I’m the Yohji Yamamoto of names.

 

“Actually,†he adds, “my favourite boy’s name is Alice. If I have a son, I’ll call him Alice.†And why not?

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  • 2 months later...
Steph

Steph

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bump :mf_rosetinted:

 

hey Kata,

 

great one for bumping!

 

This article is as fresh as it was then..it breaks down the present music scene well oh and .I love the last paragraph about his name...

 

 

 

 

Mika's still got it covered. His name is a single-word, global-fame-friendly brand that will be easy to say in 15 languages. Well, there's no need to tell you my surname,he says. My name is unisex. One size fits all. I'm the Yohji Yamamoto of names.

 

Actually, he adds,my favourite boy's name is Alice. If I have a son, I'll call him Alice. And why not?

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avoca

avoca

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yeah, kata, thx for bumping up the article. very interesting! once again, one I had missed, cause I came too late to the forum.

 

I have a cousin named alice and it's a girl. but it could be an interesting name for a guy.

 

andrea is a boy name in italy for ex....:wink2:

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Steph

Steph

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yeah, kata, thx for bumping up the article. very interesting! once again, one I had missed, cause I came too late to the forum.

 

I have a cousin named alice and it's a girl. but it could be an interesting name for a guy.

 

andrea is a boy name in italy for ex....:wink2:

 

 

 

i think we should all bumb old threads they are so good to read again!

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avoca

avoca

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oh I am all for that! I have recently read another article I had missed cause I came to forum too late for it. trouble is it's hard for me to bump what I don't know it ever existed in the 1st place..

but I can do the same job with threads I remember of.. :thumb_yello:

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Steph

Steph

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oh I am all for that! I have recently read another article I had missed cause I came to forum too late for it. trouble is it's hard for me to bump what I don't know it ever existed in the 1st place..

but I can do the same job with threads I remember of.. :thumb_yello:

 

i looked at my profile and clicked on threads started and i was amazed how many i started and i have already forgotten some!!!!!!and they were good!!!!!11

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avoca

avoca

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i looked at my profile and clicked on threads started and i was amazed how many i started and i have already forgotten some!!!!!!and they were good!!!!!11

 

 

awww... great idea, steph!! take a look at my profile! you , genious!! :shocked::thumb_yello:

 

yes, i do remember alice cooper. hope mika's kid will pursue a different career than that... :biggrin2::mf_rosetinted:

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Mireille

Mireille

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And he knows that he could get away with naming his boy Alice, because STILL, there are many women out there who would have his babies ANYWAY. I mean, I would let him name the kid Alice if I were to have his! Hahahaha.

 

Ha, ha ! I would, too, but I don't think my mother would appréciate ! Her mother-in-law (I mean my grandmother) was called Alice and they never had very good relationship !!!! :naughty: So if I decided to call my child Alice, wether a boy or a girl, I think she would not be very happy !!!!!!!!!!!

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