MikaRMS Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 IF you get angry when you read bad reviews gow away NOW His debut single, Grace Kelly, currently sits at No 1, and you could certainly argue the time is right for singer-songwriter Mika Penniman's ascendancy. The former boy soprano evidently feels British music needs an injection of high-camp glitz: not an unreasonable conclusion, given British music is so glamour-starved that one clothing manufacturer was recently reduced to asking the Arctic Monkeys' drummer to design his own fashion collection. Penniman has signposted his commitment to musical fabulousness by aligning himself with Queen. As well as namechecking Freddie Mercury in Grace Kelly, his debut album offers Billy Brown - its titular hero and vaudeville air echoing Queen's Bring Back That Leroy Brown - and Big Girl (You Are Beautiful), a thumbs-up for cuddly ladies that invites comparison to Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls, a cappella intro and all. If you're looking to snare the mainstream market, evoking Queen is theoretically a neat idea: the queues for We Will Rock You suggest the British public will buy anything associated with Mercury and co, even a theatrical entertainment so shoddy it makes your average nativity play look like Ibsen. However, as Life in Cartoon Motion plays out amid falsetto vocals, massed harmonies and OTT gestures - gospel choirs, Lollipop's playground chant about sex, borrowing Cutting Crew's horrible 1980s power ballad (I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight on Relax - the Queen comparison brings with it a creeping disquiet. At their most laudable, Queen eschewed good taste in order to make unique records: Bohemian Rhapsody or the baffling Bicycle Race. Here, you get all the kitsch and none of the ambition. Penniman's idea of restraint is to wait until track five before breaking out the children's chorus, but his goal is nothing more high-minded than piloting a safe path between recent big sellers from Tesco's CD department: Scissor Sisters, the Feeling and the Darkness. With little behind it except a desire to be loved, the showboating becomes wearyingly relentless. Listening to Life in Cartoon Motion is like being held at gunpoint by Bonnie Langford. In both vocal style and the peculiar combination of overbearing self-confidence and desperate neediness that emanates from Grace Kelly's chorus of "Why don't you like me?" or from Love Today ("Everybody's going to love today ... you've got to love me!" he cries, while the oompah-disco backing goes all out to unite everybody in a desire to thump him), Penniman resembles Robbie Williams, albeit a Robbie Williams who has abandoned his array of knowing winks in the audience's direction and instead keeps frantically grinning and doing jazz hands every 30 seconds. Yet even Williams might draw the line at Big Girl (You Are Beautiful). Were the song any more brazen in its efforts to get hen parties clambering on tables, it would dress as a fireman and pour baby oil over its chest. But again, making the debt to Queen explicit proves a bad idea. It is tribute to the acting abilities of Mercury - whose interest in fat-bottomed girls was surely minimal in real life - that on the song of that name he sounded racked with lust. Penniman, on the other had, sounds like a man assuring someone through gritted teeth that her bum doesn't look big in that, while covertly eyeing up the size-zero shop assistant. His compliments sound like insults: you don't have to be Susie Orbach to realise that telling an obese woman she looks "like a big balloon" is unlikely to get her weeping with gratitude. "Big boy coming around and they'll be gonna do baby," he sings. It's not just that "they'll be gonna do baby" represents the worst lyrical euphemism for sexual intercourse since Jamie Foxx's Storm, which spent four revolting minutes comparing an amorata's profusion of vaginal mucus to a downpour of rain ("it's cloudy skies between your thighs" etc). It's also that it has a touch of infantilising goo-goo-ga-ga about it. He ends up patronising what he sets out to praise. A terrible old ham at 23, Penniman can't get himself off the stage. The album's grand finale, Happy Endings, is followed by a secret track, then a "bonus" track, Ring Ring. The latter is not the Abba song, but sounds as if it might have been Belgium's 1984 Eurovision entry. You keep expecting Terry Wogan to interrupt with a sardonic aside ("Where did the Belgians find this big eejit?"). Coming on top of everything else, it's a bonus only in so far as the wafer-thin wafer that finally caused Mr Creosote to explode might be considered a bonus. Rather troublingly, given Grace Kelly's sales figures, you suspect plenty of people will be perfectly happy to gorge themselves sick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meimei88 Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Hmm article looks familiar.. whats the source/URL/author? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BexxY Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 if i ever find the person who wrote that remind me to push him over Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mika-holic Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 I shoul have followed the warning and didn't read the article... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnFa Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Hmm.. Yeah, nice review.. I like the way the person keeps comparing Mika to other artists.. Very well done.. Yeah.. *sigh* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dangerous Kat Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 if i ever find the person who wrote that remind me to push him over Not only will I pust him/her over, I will make sure that when I do push her over, it's near a mud pile where pigs have done their buisness. Bleh, I'm evil...well not really but the person who wrote that is Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martine Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Time for a little lynch-party? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BexxY Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Not only will I pust him/her over, I will make sure that when I do push her over, it's near a mud pile where pigs have done their buisness. Bleh, I'm evil...well not really but the person who wrote that is hahah thats so funny :naughty: well its like in the film Bambi says "if you cant say anything nice dont say nothing at all" and i think perhaps there are a few journalists who need to take that advice it would make a much nicer world to live in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gatagordinha Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 I am pretty certain this is the infamous Alex Petridis review from - I think - the Guardian or the Observer. The one that made Brian May so angry! :sneaky2: :starwars: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnFa Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 well its like in the film Bambi says "if you cant say anything nice dont say nothing at all" Actually it's Thumper who says that.. It's what his father always says.. aæsfkn as. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirtilla Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 just one word: Mikannoyance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikaRMS Posted April 5, 2007 Author Share Posted April 5, 2007 yeah it was the Guardian. You can email back with your opinion on the review so if anyone wants to tell them anything, message me and I'll give you the link:thumb_yello: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
*_sam_* Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Well, whatever...some people just take music FAR FAR FAR too seriously. People like it. People buy it. End of. Who is he to patronise people who enjoy music that isn;t to his paticular taste? Thats the main thing that annoys me about reviews. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BettyBoo Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 so ill just say wot a complete "bar-steward!"....reviews like that come from ppl that cant sing thus so,they BECOME critics!..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyMiranda Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 that was a awful review Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lollipop15 Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 *says to herself that she shouldn`t read this crap* After reading these endless sentences where this journalist compares Mika to other pointless singers, I had a question - HOW DOES HE KNOWS ABOUT ALL THOESE PERVERSE SONG WRITERS? The only explanation I can see is that this journalist himself is a HuGhe fan of all these vulgar texts! Don`t you think so???? I think it`s veeeery credibly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annabelle Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 ....reviews like that come from ppl that cant sing thus so,they BECOME critics!..... Or they come from people who suffer from serious lack of taste. Mika's CD is amazing! The best CD I've ever heard, actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackwildkitty Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 I've read some bad reviews, but this one didn't even make me mad. It didn't leave any feeling in me, didn't touch the nerve, so it's pointless. It only left one thought in my head - the man who wrote it must be some sad, lonely, grumpy, unhappy, old person, who is just looking for something to criticize. I don't think he even believed in what he wrote. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kk448 Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 I thought the review was boring, I didn't finish reading it. It was basically just one long, neverending sentence where the author tried to make himself seem smart by fitting in as many "big words" as he could...that's just my opinion, lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
my_rainbow_radio Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 I think I read this awhile ago on some random site but I didn't want to put it on here because of the language. It's even more infuriating the second time around! What is wrong with the guy that wrote it? Whatever. More Mika for us then! And the comparison to the Jamie Foxx thing...I can't even think of a response to that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sity Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Why do I get the feeling he's forced to say anything bad about Mika! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wendi Posted April 7, 2007 Share Posted April 7, 2007 So, not everyone likes Mika - that is their problem!!!!!!!!! We know different!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babspanky Posted April 8, 2007 Share Posted April 8, 2007 http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/5018.html They don't like LT! Oh well. I do and that's what matters! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnFa Posted April 8, 2007 Share Posted April 8, 2007 http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/5018.html They don't like LT! Oh well. I do and that's what matters! Haha, poor her... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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