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Good debut from Mika - Canadian Album Review


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JAM! SHOWBIZ

Album Review: Mika

 

LIFE IN CARTOON MOTION

Good debut from Mika

By DARRYL STERDAN -- Sun Media

16 March 2007

 

Mika

Life in Cartoon Motion

(Casablanca-Island/Universal)

 

"I try to be like Grace Kelly, but all her looks were too sad," explains Mika. "So I try a little Freddie. I've gone identity-mad!" He's not kidding about that last part.

 

The 21-year-old Beirut-born, London-based dance-pop phenom -- whose name, FYI, is pronounced Mee-ka -- channels a host of retrotastic influences on his exuberant smash-hit debut Life in Cartoon Motion. But perhaps none more than the one and only Freddie Mercury of Queen.

 

Just check out the stratospheric falsetto vocals and addictively pumping, grandly flourished piano-pop of his chart-topping single Grace Kelly and you'll see what we mean. But the mono-monikered Mika doesn't stop there.

 

Lollipop is a funky sugar-rush reminiscent of George Michael. Love Today gets down to the disco grooves of Scissor Sisters. Ring Ring puts Mika in touch with his inner Elton. The gay romance Billy Brown has chirpy horns and a bouncy groove nicked from Rufus Wainwright. And any dance tune called Relax can't help but conjure up memories of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

 

Mika's uncanny resemblance to his forebears has its downside -- you're too busy playing Name That Singer to appreciate these songs on their own merits.

 

Still, until he settles into his own groove -- and finds his own identity -- he's certainly in good company.

 

Track Listing:

1. Stuck In The Middle

2. Lollipop

3. Love Today

4. My Interpretation

5. Happy Ending/Over My Shoulder

6. Grace Kelly

7. Relax Take It Easy

8. Any Other World

9. Billy Brown

10. Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)

---

 

CW.

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:thumb_yello: thanks for posting this,:thumb_yello:

I'm not sure I agree with this review, I think he totally misreads Mika, Mika has no need to borrow and steal from other artists.

 

Of course in songwriting there will always be bits that sound familiar , as every artist is influenced by his predecessors, it is the music that is heard in the first instance that motivates and grabs an artist to write in the first place.

 

Mika's style is unique and meaningful in its own right, he deserves to be judged on his own terms !

 

It is on the whole not a bad write-up though...

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