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Mika the man, the myth, the music - Johannesburg,South Africa


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:thumb_yello:Mika the man, the myth, the music

 

May 2, 2007

Tonight

By Guy Adama

 

Take Freddie Mercury without the handlebar moustache;throw in equal dollops of Elton John, Robbie Williams,and Scissor Sisters; garnish with matinee-idol looks and the lyrical dexterity of a young David Bowie.

 

The result is Mika, a London-based singer who has appeared from nowhere to go straight to the top of the charts. He’s charming, he’s 23, and if you believe the hype, he’s the biggest thing to hit pop for a generation.

 

In Britain, the Beirut-born prodigy has been signed up as a "face" of Paul Smith and is about to embark on a sellout tour. He’s done Jools Holland, met Cat Stevens, and recently received an unsolicited piece of fan-mail from a certain Brian May. Like any new pop sensation, he is about to enter the international celebrity stratosphere.

 

He is the official biggest thing since…well, since the last big thing. Yet, for all the praise now being heaped upon him, the curly-haired singer is no ordinary plastic pop-poppet.

 

He was trained at the Royal College of Music, plays piano like an angel, and writes and produces all his own songs.

 

In an era of mass-market bubblegum pop, the boy is like a sore thumb.

 

He’s also delightfully eccentric, with a bizarre transatlantic accent, a polysexual persona, and a bizarre outlook on life (as detailed on his Internet site).

 

"In the past four or five years, we’ve been force-fed a strict diet of stars who don’t write their own material, can’t play instruments and hardly ever play live," said Mika’s manager, Iain Watt.

 

"As this number one shows, he’s different, the real deal." The singer is also cocky and opinionated. He boasts the most colourful of life-stories, and despite having struggled for almost five years to break into the music industry, is described by one recent interviewer as "so confident it’s frightening"

 

Mika’s mother pulled him out of the educational system, and allowed him to study music. He developed into a child singing prodigy, performing at the Royal Opera House and singing advertising jingles as a teenager.

 

"His demo was originally pitched across record companies in the UK, and was completely ignored by them," said Watt. "So he went to Miami to continue working on songs and when he was over there he met a management company, Fuerte."

 

They brokered a deal with Universal Records, and decided on a softlysoftly approach to launching him. A mini EP, Relax/Take it Easy, was released in August 2006.

 

The result has been a more-or-less overnight sensation, helped by Mika’s sensitivity to the multi-media revolution in music. His Myspace site, which has received almost a million hits, showcases a cast of fictional cartoon characters that appear in lyrics of the debut album.

 

He is often compared to poly-sexual acts such as the Scissor Sisters, and likes to keep his sexuality ambiguous.

 

"He’s kept his private life private," says Rice. "We asked him early on whether he wanted to do that sort of ground in interviews and he said he’d rather not. But he’s friendly about it if it gets raised in an interview, rather than defensive. He is single, though."

 

Another friend says: "He likes artists such as David Bowie, Mark Bolan and Prince, and one reason is that he likes their sexual ambiguity. Like them, he likes not quite spelling things out. I think he wants to keep people guessing." – The Independent

 

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Article looks/sounds familiar.. but couldn't find it on the forum.. so here you go!!

 

Go Mika!! Taking the world by storm!!

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I know why it sounds familiar. It is the one that appeared in the independent newspaper at the beginning of this year just after MIKA won the BBC Sound of 2007 poll. It was the first ever article I read about him. Love it loads. I have it saved on my pc.:blush-anim-cl:

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