mariposa

T4p! Enjoyed reading it.

lol, trying to imagine Mika as a brain surgeon is not the easiest thing

You know Swedish!????

Jag pratar inte svenska, men jag talar lite norska.

But: At least I know how to say Thank you in Swedish (not that it would be that different from Thank you in Norwegian.) Because you know, as I've leraned from my Norwegian textbook: "Norsk og svensk har omtrent lit uttale, men mange ord er ulike."

So yeah, god natt och sov gott! x

Just switched on my computer again since I couldn't sleep -

to read the reports of this amazing day! :wub2:

(reading this surely won't help me getting tired )

Wow! I am really thrilled for you! And tusen tack for your reviews, Sienna and mozarella!

Mika's so lovely for inviting you to the show! Just about 100 people? That sounds even smaller than the Bayern3 gig. Amazing! You surely put some atmosphere in there then singing along to all the songs

Hopefully some vids will turn up...I would love to seethe venue. Small club gigs are always so good IMO.

Oh, and mozarella: How cool is that - singing on stage with Mika *yay*

I hope we will get to see this on youtube or somewhere anytime soon (assuming that someone took vids)! You must be over the moon.

I am so happy for you 4 MFCers present at the gig tonight!

I voted for "Touches you" - My favourite song since the beginning.

I just has to be a single

And looking at the poll I reckon that I'm not the only one to think so...

Thank you for posting mariposa.

Which song or what statement that Mika has made refers to "talking cats?"

I can't figure that one out even with making allowance for translation differences.

The talking cats has me baffled too

I know, that was also the part I was going Have I missed sth?

But it clearly says "sprechende Katzen", no idea what they are referring to.

Review of TBWKTM from today, October 1, in the German newspaper "Die Welt".

http://www.welt.de/die-welt/kultur/article4692032/Der-Saenger-Mika-kehrt-in-sein-Jugendzimmer-zurueck.html

I translated the article 'cause I really like the way it is written.

translation

The singer Mika returns to his teenage bedroom

By Julian Mieth 1st Oktober 2009, 04:00

The second album of the BritPop-prodigy/wunderkind

Today no one demonstrates better than Mika that dealing with the past is a good way to trigger out colourful ideas. On his second album "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" this leads to a joyful imaginative circle of friends. Wind-up dolls in need of affection, talking cats, a crazy old man named Dr. John - in the playful pop songs you find the invisible friends of a traumatised young at heart.

Already on his debut album "Life in Cartoon Motion" two years ago, the London-based wunderkind dealt with his sad youth. At school, the son of a Lebanese mother and an American father was an outsider: due to his strange accent, his colourful clothes, his at that time stout figure/stature. Hard to imagine – today the curly head works alongside as a model. His mother took her son temporarily out of school and had him take singing lessons. That helped: By means of music he found his self-confidence and at the age of eleven he was already performing in front of a large audience on an opera stage.

But in everyday life Michael Penniman, Mika’s common name, stayed a scared oddball/nerd. "As a teenager, I was afraid to speak to people." The same person who turns into a screaming entertainer on stage admits that even today he quickly feels overstrained when being among people. "At parties I usually stand in the corner, waiting for that someone to start talking to me. That’s when I resent not being any braver."

Instead of confiding in a therapist Mika prefers working therapeutically on his own on his new record in public (millions of listeners). Heartache, hormonal boosts and identity - every aspect is dealt with here. This explains why his songs give the impression that you have just entered a teenager’s room. However, the 26-year-old knows how to put each and every graduation of feeling into an intelligent frame, and sounds at times appropriately like Freddy Mercury, at times like Elton John, Michael Jackson, the Scissor Sisters, and in his weaker moments still like Robbie Williams.

In "We Are Golden” the listener is faced with a bombastic overflowing joy of life. Mika tells his childhood dreams/the dreams of his youth and some tracks later, in the ballad “I see you”, he deals with voyeurism that is condemned to loneliness. Euphoria and lethargy are closely related in the emotional world of a teenager. But before writing his second album Mika was sinking into self doubts: Would he continue to stand up to (the reactions of) fans and critics?

It were, above all, his fantasy childhood friends, also pictured in the booklet, who helped him in the composing process. Dr. John from the song of the same title for example, the guy with a preference for chicken feathers, is said to already have helped Mika back then in many a difficult time. Or the doll in "Toy Boy" – a song coming up with violins, clarinets and flutes as reminiscence to the Disney film classics – complaining with a velvety voice about evil voodoo magic.

Mika loves theatrical effects: wide string arrangements, falsetto singing and gospel choirs can be found again and again in the wonderfully catchy melodies. However, the humorously told reflections also risk drowning in the maelstrom of chaotic grandstanding. But this effect is absolutely intended. Teenagers‘ insecurity is chased away best by loud disport/amusement. What would he do differently if he was 15 again? He wouldn’t be afraid of anything, says Mika, pauses for a moment, then adds laughing: " And I would take a lot of drugs, party and not apologise for one thing. "

Mika: The Boy Who Knew Too Much (Universal)

Rufus Wainwright - Poses

I actually think there will be a supporting act...Hope it's Yelle again (as for the 2007/208 tour)...Her music kinda grew to me I must say

The Sun Is Often Out - Patrick Wolf

One of the saddest songs he ever did. But it is so beautiful!

Patrick Wolf - Bluebells

Toy boy

Yeah, it's good to see an adult side to Mika, we all love him being cute and cuddly but it's nice to see he's just another normal guy. And yes, the interview overall was well conducted, great questions allowing for proper discussion.

I agree 100%! A really different interview, very serious, but Mika's still very entertaining.

Good gone girl

Yet another reason to love this beautiful country!

In Germany it "only" entered at position 6...http://www.media-control.de/madonnas-traumstart-in-den-album-charts.html

oh i 've heard they have set up a tent for all the fans who can't go in. i was disappointed but its ok .

in that tent we can still see the show and we'll be with mikafans only.

ok i'll give anything to be in that show but i'm going to make the most of it.

and if i won't get in i'm going to have a good time anyway and hope that mika will still meet us

fingers crossed everybody!

Mika's already number 1 in France !!!

 

http://www.chartsinfrance.net/MIKA/news-68678.html

 

yeah ! we rock !!

 

we have to wait on friday to have the details of the sellings but, between the 18 and the 20th september (3 days ! ) :

35 676 sellings

5 751 downloads

= 41 427 sellings !!!

I love France!

Does anyone know what position the album reached in Germany? I tried to check the other day but couldn't find anything.

 

So far, Ireland is the only country (to the best of my knowledge) where it hasn't reached the Top 10.

I just checked. TBWKTM entered at position 6.

source: http://www.media-control.de/madonnas-traumstart-in-den-album-charts.html

I quote: Mika legt mit "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" seinen zweiten Longplayer vor. Die CD steigt auf dem sechsten Rang ein.

It's ok (top ten), but he could have done better...Hopefully more people will buy TBWKTM when the following singles are released.

Thank you Sephira and Mariposa!!

nice and interesting article!!

 

* Tanguy is the main character of a novel and a film

 

The film was such an accurate description of the sociological phenomenon it evocates that

now in French the word Tanguy is the usual term to designate an adult still living with his parents.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanguy_(film))

Ah, now that makes sense!

Thank you!

sariflor tweeted that he did "pick up off the floor"! as i can read from this thread that she was there live, was that song on tv too? or will we have to wait until they show the whole thing?

Really?

Wow! This song must be amazing live!

In red my comments.

Le grand serein

(no idea about how to translate the title…any ideas?)

portrait

MIKA. Creativity has helped the new pop star to find a way out of his complicated teenage years.

By MATTHEW ECOIFFIER

First observation: Mika is very tall – according to his record label he measures 1.92 m (6.3 feet)- and he also has big feet. At the other end of this long well toned body and his - let’s call it Mediterranean - good looks, undulates thick auburn hair whenever his hazel eyes are framed by long lashes. (This sentence is my favourite! ) Just like the cartoons painted on his CD booklets and which can also be found in his songs. 20 h 30. After Mika had made three faces (I guess it is in the sense that Mika was joking/making faces?) the photographer gets angry, takes the singer's beautiful face in his hands. He puts Mika‘s shirt back in his pants held by suspenders/braces. Mika is surprised, but doesn’t do anything (in reaction). He looks rather inquisitive/curious and seems to be happy that the pressure is dropping now. "We sold six million of the previous CD, including 1.4 in France and as many in England, and just about 200 000 in the United States," says his manager who looks like a trader in his thirties. That is the commercial callenge of his second CD with the title: The Boy Who Knew Too Much, "and doesn’t know when to stop," as stated one angry critic being inspired by the falsettos of his three octaves and a half ranging voice as well as by the carousel of references (from Freddie Mercury to George Michael); an opus that is yet based on a fantasy and extraordinary power melodies.

Once seated in the back of a bar where he orders a beer as you would usually do in London pubs, he starts putting the hypothesis made about his biography, which had often been changed after he got famous, back in the picture (he corrects them). He told us that when he was a child he was "obsessed by Chantal Goya and her magic forest" and now reinvented as Bécassine’s cousin (What’s that about?). Is it true that he lives in London in the same building as his parents? There he is immediately dressed as a late/retarded (?)Tanguy* surrounded by his three very caring sisters and his little brother Fortune. "I know the film, but it's not my life! I have my own apartment on the mezzanine floor with a kitchen and a washing machine."

21h 00. Slowly, the gilded (GOLDEN! ) Parisian palace that he describes as "Rococo" seems to take him over like a “Madeleine mémorielle” (I think this is just a metaphor to explain that something takes you back, you remember sth?). His French is less controlled than his English, because of his childhood. His father, an American financier, and his mother, belonging to the Lebanese bourgeoisie, moved to Paris when he was one year old. It was the golden times of Mika, living in a beautiful apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement (in Paris). It was the times of good grades at school and of the Russian piano teacher who drank too much coffee and bad breath. "There was also a Lebanese priest who used to come to our house every week to have a drink. I was six years old and he had a deal with me. He smoked his pipe, then he put his arm behind the sofa and passed it to me. I loved the taste of honey, like burnt sugar.”During the Gulf War, his father was detained for seven months at the U.S. embassy in Kuwait.

The family experienced a reversal of fortune and they find themselves in London. That is where Mika got sacked from the French high school. "It is as if a block had fallen on me. In one year I became dyslexic. Before that, I could read music and I could write. I lost it all.” His mother got him out of school and lets him do what he wants to do provided that he would practice playing the piano for three hours a day. He composed his first songs aged 11. "Super simple and not very good. But I loved testing them on people and see if they would remember them. "

For lanky boys, sensitive like him, puberty is the time where you get attacked a lot. "I was totally apart. Not smart enough to be in the club of geeks, not cool, not sporty. And I was rejected because I was not very manly and stout. I’m goofy», he says smiling. Now this "adds to his style” when performing on stage. But in high school, he was insulted because of that. "I had this identity of a sad clown. I began to adopt a destructive behaviour: I went out too often, drank too much, spent time with older people" Except that this time he is musically armed to develop his magic formula: using the power of melodies of counting-out rhymes which make even those people dance who reject him. "We're not what you think, we are made of gold," he sings. Or, at a pinch incestuous "I want to be your brother, your father, your mother and your sister and whatever else that touches you." (The author got this message wrong obviously…nothing incestuous about it IMO. It's about jealousy, right? Being jealous e. g. of your beloved's family...)

He was concerned about seeing himself locked up in this imaginary world he has created in his teens. Nor sour, nor sweet. "At Canal+ (French tv channel), they asked me if I will come back as a Teletubby in another life, if I had the Peter Pan syndrome? But this is not at all my character, not at all what I’m doing. Nobody asks this question to Tim Burton. He is a genius, he has this fantasy, he corrects. Before recalling in English, that "the image of a joyful childhood is a pure marketing concept. Mika would rather be an Edward Scissorhands who would have grafted piano keys at his fingertips, than Pee Wee, the man child. (love this image!)

With such a CV, the gay magazine Tetu is irritated that Mika refuses to come out of the closet. He says that he is not "a Hollywood actor in the closet. I am very open when it comes to sexuality. Some people tell me: "You're afraid of the commercial consequences." “But they did not listen to my tracks!" He's got a face to make you fall on your knees," he sings in Blame it on the Girls ... Having overcome their simplistic violence, he does not see why he should label himself. But others are free to do so: "I don’t hide anything that is part of my life, I am not ashamed of anything. Am I in a relationship right now? Yeah. But I protect it.” Le Figaro pictures him as "a cross between the devil and the perfect son-in-law who is capable of having a good conversation." (lol) This is contradicted by the fact that he declined to have dinner at the Elysée Palace with Nicolas Sarkozy and the Lebanese President: "If I was a fan, andwere inspired by what Sarkozy says, I would have returned from LA." He finds it however “super interesting” to see what Frédéric Mitterrand will be doing whom he watched in Etoiles et toiles (Stars and paintings) (What is this btw?) at the Ministry of Culture. Mika sees himself as "apolitical" but "culturally left. But above all, my opinion doesn’t count. Should I ask Sarkozy to visit him to play the piano or ask his opinion on my music?". Nevertheless he goes the polls. And has nothing of a young ethereal pop star. Passing three days in Paris, he seems to be (plus affûté) sharper (?) on the Hadopi laws (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law ) as Juliette Greco and Pierre Arditi: "This Hadopi law voted upon yesterday scares me. It’s an infringement of freedom.”He defends streaming (subscription to listen to songs online without downloading) and predicts "a battle between artists and record labels" for the distribution of royalties.

22 h 00. The time to have dinner. His mother, appears beautiful and imposing at the end of the corridor. Tomorrow, Mika has a day off. He will go for a walk in the streets of Paris, "probably alone". "I’m walking/Going on, that's the only thing that has helped me in my life."

Photo Samuel Kirszenbaum

In 5 dates

August 18, 1983

Birth of Michael Penniman in Beirut (Lebanon).

2006

Release of his first digital single Relax, Take it Easy in Great Britain

2007

Including the hit single Grace Kelly, Life in Cartoon Motion becomes the best selling album of the year in France.

2008

Concert at the Parc des Princes in front of more than 55 000 people.

Septembre 2009

Release of The Boy That Knew Too Much, album written and composed in London and Paris and recorded in LA like the previous one.

* Tanguy is the main character of a novel and a film

The film was such an accurate description of the sociological phenomenon it evocates that

now in French the word Tanguy is the usual term to designate an adult still living with his parents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanguy_(film))

I think it's a really interesting article. I like interviews that cover a bit more than the usual thigs we would read/hear in any interview.

Ok, so if you have any remarks on how to correct this English version, please pm me. Will edit the post then first thing in the morning.

Ok, I'm done now with the translation...

It was quite difficult to put it into "understandable" English since the author uses a lot of methaphorical language and (as I've already explained) French isn't my first language.

I guess I understood most of is right, though I'm not 100% sure about everything. So if you Frenchies or other French-speaking MFCers find that I translated sth completely wrong, please correct me.

Gotta do some editing on the text now and will post the whole translation in a few minutes.

Ok, so I will start working on a translation. And when it's finished check back with you to see if I got right what the author wanted to say

Might take some time though...If someone is faster than me, feel free to go for it. At least it's a good practise for me then

Merci for posting!

Interesting to read...

I could give it a try (the translation)...But since French is not my mother tongue it might take some time...Maybe some Frenchies would like to help me?

Well, for a start, I decided to pick this sentence

«Je ne cache rien de ma vie, je n’ai honte de rien. Est-ce que je suis dans une relation en ce moment ? Ouais. Mais je la protège.»

"I'm not hiding anything that is part of my life, I'm not ashamed of anything. Am I in a relationship at this moment? Yes. But I protect it."

Oh, and here's the link btw

http://www.liberation.fr/culture/0101593678-le-grand-serein

Oh ouais, les caquelons à fondue, la vie! Sans oublier qu'un coup de four à raclette sur la caboche, ça peut faire mal mwa ha ha

 

 

Un simple bouclier ne vous sera d'aucune utilité, Dame Angele! mwaaaaa ha ha

 

 

I've heard it's big. But I've never been there.... I can't help you there, sorry

Look what they say on their homepage

We have several multi-purpose rooms and halls with capacities ranging from 50 to 11,000 people

Well, I hope it will be the 50-people room

lol, no, well I guess it's gotta be 11,000 people then...

hey, stop talking french, i don't understand that!

the ticket for basel was 10 euro more expensive than any of the german ones - is switzerland so expensive, the venue so exclusive, or why is that?

Amsterdam and Antwerp were also 10 euros more expensive than the German dates...I don't know why that is...

But your question is a good one: Does anybody know the Jakobshalle?

i'm getting scared when i look at the list in my signature... WTF was i thinking, buying all those tickets, for shows that take place within 2 weeks?! but it's so easy in combination with an interrail ticket! guess i just have to accept that i'm officially mad.

Don't worry...But tbh I start having some qualms about my "panic purchases" yesterday. They will calm down though very soon, I'm sure. It's just the thought of all the precious money spent in one go - not even including travelling costs and accomodation :eek:

But it'll be so worth it!