Mika releases his first album of knowing agit-pop only in February, but on MySpace, there is a fever of expectation not witnessed since just before Lily Allen made it big. His on-stage charisma is such that comparisons are being made to Freddie Mercury.
Last year, he scooped record deals on both sides of the Atlantic, and he has just been chosen as the extremely pretty face of Paul Smith’s 2007 global ad campaign. In America, he has been picked up by Tommy Mottola, former mentor to Mariah Carey and one of the music industry’s most respected players. “In greatness, he could achieve what Bowie or Robbie or Elton has achieved,” Mottola says. “He’s in the league of those gentlemen.” Indeed, there is something almost surreal about the certainty of Mika’s fame.
Today, wearing flared jeans and pointy tan shoes, he is the lunchtime guest on BBC London’s light-entertainment programme. He thunders his way through Billy Brown, about a man who abandons his family to embark on a gay affair. “Well, a song about a man abandoning his family for another man. I don’t think that’s been done too many times on national radio before,” he says.
Mika is all about doing things that haven’t been done too many times before. He’s a trained opera singer, and gave his first public performance at the Royal Opera House
aged 11. And he’s got the sort of beauty — the sculpted face and tumbling locks of a Michelangelo figure — that will have middle-aged women queuing up to mother him, and their daughters wanting to, well, go shopping with him. But it’s there that the similarities with the pop-opera band Il Divo end. When fame finally hits, it will be because there is only one Mika.
His style of stage artistry arrives with immaculate timing, as the British public is buying Scissor Sisters albums by the barrel-load and finding room for flamboyant acts such as Rufus Wainwright. “I’m far more anarchic than any band in Camden right now,” he says. “And people are gagging for it. It’s a reaction to overcorporate 1990s pop and the snobbery of the indie scene.”
He’s right. Not since the 1980s, when Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Kate Bush were in the charts, has pop had such creative potential. Now, with acts such as the harp-playing singer-songwriter Patrick Wolf, the Sao Paulo art/design/ dance band CSS and the Gossip (the Arkansas three-piece whose lead singer, Beth Ditto, is a large lesbian with an inclination towards slipping off her clothes on stage and holding forth on gay marriage), a new wave of young musicians is reinventing the genre.
The young songwriters and performers who make up this countercultural pop movement are a far more grass-roots bunch than the Identikit, manufactured bands that have defined the industry over the past decade. Styled up to the max — think pop socks and wife-beaters for CSS, hot pants for the 15-stone Ditto, who has just topped the NME’s cool list, and an extraordinary confection of silver lamé and fluoro sportswear by the avant-garde east-London fashion designer Cassette Playa for Wolf — they see as anathema the notion of doing anything anyone’s way but their own. Full to the brim with ironic knowingness, they are here to remind us that the sort of vapid pop by numbers offered up by television talent contests and cynical music impresarios isn’t the only kind there is.
And they are nothing if not sure of their own minds. One record-company suit, misguided enough to attempt to mould Mika into “the new Craig David”, even inspired a song on his album. “Should I bend over?” he asks on Grace Kelly, in protest at the idea of being in any way moulded. Another track, Big Girl (You Are Beautiful), is a broadside against size-zero foolishness. There is a awareness to his songs that earlier generations of pop rebels didn’t have. They are savvy about the marketing machine, wily about the mechanics and pitfalls of celebrity. “I’m delighted if people take that idea from what I do,” Mika says. “But I detach myself from politics or any kind of particular angle. Who I am isn’t important.”
Mostly, however what he and his peers really, really are is ambitious. Mika began bagging commercial work, packaging up demo cassettes and hitting the phones, from the age of 11. “Important people would take my calls simply because I was a kid. My mum had no idea.” Thus, the young Mika ended up singing on adverts for Wrigley chewing gum and the Kuwaiti Danish Dairy Co, and providing British Airways with in-flight music.
Mika’s still got it covered. His name is a single-word, global-fame-friendly brand that will be easy to say in 15 languages. “Well, there’s no need to tell you my surname,” he says. “My name is unisex. One size fits all. I’m the Yohji Yamamoto of names.
“Actually,” he adds, “my favourite boy’s name is Alice. If I have a son, I’ll call him Alice.” And why not?
Doing it their way: pop's new wave
TILLY AND THE WALL
Origin Nebraska.
Rise to fame Touring and wildfire word of mouth led to a bonkers performance on the David Letterman show. Middle America reeled.
Look The cast of The L Word meets the kids from Fame.
Signature sound A little like Belle and Sebastian.
USP They tap-dance! Ditching the whole ugly-fat-indie-drummer thing, Tilly have a resident dancer who whirls her arms like a lunatic auditioning for Stepping Out.
Prospects They have charm and tunes. Why not? New album, Bottom of Barrels, is out now.
CANSEI DE SER SEXY (CSS)
Origin Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Rise to fame A self-declared internet band, CSS owe their success to the all-seeing eye of the chat-room kids.
Look Rainbow leggings, leopard-print boiler suits and neon pumps.
Signature sound DIY electro-punk. Their self-titled album is all angular guitars chewed up by half-processed beats.
USP Completely credible but joyfully poppy.
Prospects Riding the hype wagon, CSS could take over the world.
THE GOSSIP
Origin Arkansas, via Portland, Oregon.
Rise to fame Huge on the punk scene for years. (They used to open for the White Stripes.) Their latest album, Standing in the Way of Control, is only just blowing up.
Look Gender-bending androgyny for the band; 1950s-inspired high glamour for the lead singer, Beth Ditto.
Signature sound Bone-crackingly raw gospel punk with death-defying hooks.
USP Beth Ditto. Her voice, her look, her attitude — she’s unstoppable.
Prospects Godlike cult status, but possibly too political to crack the mainstream.
LUKE TOMS
Origin Cornwall.
Rise to fame Recently supported Mika. His debut EP, Fools with Money, is out on January 15.
Look The bastard offspring of Freddie Mercury and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
Signature sound Freddie Mercury via indie rock.
USP It’s all about the moustache and swooning tunes.
Prospects The new Mika.
JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN
Origin New York.
Rise to fame One of the New York art/folk set, Joan has been in Antony and the Johnsons and played with Rufus Wainwright. She went out with Jeff Buckley.
Look Rock chick does vintage boho.
Signature sound Beguilingly gentle art-house folk that packs an emotional punch. Think Dusty Springfield or a female Chet Baker.
USP Artful without being alienating.
Prospects If quiet is the new loud (see other new pop faces such as Beirut, Jeremy Warmsley, Emmy the Great), then Joan will be queen.
PATRICK WOLF
Origin London.
Rise to fame Classically trained and critically acclaimed; his new album is out in February.
Look Formerly a charity-shop junkie, Wolf is channelling a Weimar Republic dilettante look for the new album.
Signature sound Ethereal, often experimental, highly stylised songsmithery.
USP A genuine auteur.
Prospects On the new album, The Magic Position, Wolf adopts a rock’n’roll strut that should win him new fans. Marcelo Dos Santos
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