Mika

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I went to see up-and-coming popstar Mika last night. Dingwalls is a rubbish venue, but Mika more than made up for it. Although he's relatively new, as 2007's great big hype, he seems to have amassed a hoard of fans. Fan girls crowded in front of the stage a good twenty minutes before the gig began, all clutching their Mika rosettes and sucking the Mika lollipops which had been dutifully provided by his street team.

Mika's performance was energetic and entertaining. He bopped around the stage, high-kicking and flailing his arms about with aplomb. He is quite tall, thin, with a fey indie style dressed in white shirt, red trousers and black braces (looked better than it sounds). His voice has a quite surprising range - from high falsetto to an almost indie growl, the vocals oscillate, often in the same song.

Mika's popstar equation:

(Jake Shears + Freddy Mercury) - (homosexuality + campness + rock) = Mika
(Rufus Wainwright x disco) x metrosexuality =


Sort of. Either that, or he's oddly unique, and yet not really unique either. The songs sound like everything we've heard before in a familiar, loving way. Most are instantly catchy.

Mika is a popstar


His first single, Relax (Take it Easy) opened the gig, and it is ace, a potential anthem for early 2007 with its arms-aloft-yet-chilled sentiment, soaring high disco chorus and dance-bop beats. This was followed by the more strident, more uptempo Love Today and other jolly, ecccentric songs about married men having gay affairs, and loving larger ladies, and a rather affecting, dramatic ballad. The gig ended with the anthemic-although-formulaic Grace Kelly, made better with ace vogue-esque hand movements. The encore was the quite wonderful playground-esque Lollipop, which could either be about having too much sex, or too much wanking or quite possibly neither of these things.

The dancing for Lollipop involved playing with his braces in a jaunty fashion. This was rather good.

At one point his grandmother appeared on stage to dance with him, providing the best On-Stage Granny Action since Boonika banged her drum for Moldova on stage at Eurovision 2005.

He has an ace drummer, who plays a starring role during Grace Kelly.

Mika is almost certainly destined for popstardom. The songs are ace, he's a great performer. Hurrah.


Mika website Mika myspace

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mika - Popstarz - January!

Hooray!

I think he has the homosexuality (yes, he and I don't know him, but his songs have the campness

P - o - p

Anonymous said...

Woah. *tries not to be jealous*

I found out a few hours before that Mika was playing a gig in Birmingham, about 10 minutes after I got on the train taking me back to Aber. I was not happy. Roll on the album, UK domination, and short spell at The Priory.

Jamie said...

Ooh, I like him!

thedailygrindr said...

we would probably have sex with mika.