Mika | Mikasounds.com

The rain is falling in Los Angles. Today I woke up again in my hotel room and for the first time it dawned on me. I have been away from home for almost 11 months. As the end of the year is coming I thought I would round up, where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. It all started in november last year. What started off in 2009 as a 3 month tour, pilled up into almost a year and a half of traveling and performing. It was now the end of November 2010 and I was done. I hadn’t written a song in months and had no idea where I would even start. Touring has a different effect on everyone. Some artists are able to write on the road, but I found it impossible. As the show evolved and changed around the world, there was hardly any room for anything else. It was worth it of course. My show’s had never sold as many tickets and I had been given a once in a lifetime opportunity, to perform in person to all my fans that had supported me from the beginning as well as making new ones along the way.

In October 2010 my sister Paloma had a horrific accident. In the months that followed, every aspect of our family life was thrown up in the air. Out of a tragic moment, comes a wave of opportunity, to change and change we did, everyone in my family changed in some way from that day on. I knew I had to go and not come back until I had done what I needed to do. I had to grab the moment and make something I was truly proud of. I wouldn’t go back home until I had cracked where I was going musically. Having wanted to write in French for a long time, I called my friend the writer Doriand and asked him if he felt like spending a week with me in the studio. In February, unprepared, we set up camp at La Fabrique in Provence. In the day we wrote and in the evening i would sleep in the bed in the studio. Within three days we had written 82 Rue Des Martyr, Blame it on the weather and Elle Me Dit. For some reason, after 12 months of nothing, the songs were coming, and they were good.

I left France for Canada and set up a session with Nick Littlemore in Montreal. I realised that whilst writing the second album I had locked myself away at Olympic studios in London and worked mostly on my own. There was a loneliness and fear associated to that period that I swore never to feel again. I thought that if I could set up fake bands around the world with people I loved then maybe it would just happen. It was very important for me, that the sound of the record should come together at the same time as the writing and writing with others would help me do that. Nick Littlemore is half of the band Empire Of The Sun. I had never met him before. He was in Montreal working on the music for a new Cirque Du Soleil show. I was a timely escape. On first impressions, Nick was tall and amicable. He has a body that seems to long for him to control which gives him a loveable awkwardness. I was jet lagged, he was high and the sessions were stunning.

One the first evening together, and with the musician Paul Steel we wrote a song called Underwater. It happened in about fifteen minutes. I had just gone through a rough break up, and somehow, the pressure of the second album, the break up, the touring and my sisters accident left me feeling as if I needed to gasp for air. The chorus reflects that. “All I need is the love you breath, put your lips on me and I can live underwater”

Over the next few days, we started work on another song called the Origin Of Love. In this song, I made a conscious decision to write as honest a love song as possible. the concept was simple; let’s forget history, lets forget the bible and all religious fairytales, the only thing I know is the love I have for you. Forget God, forget Adam and Eve, the origin is you, you are the origin of love.

“Love is a drug and you are my cigarette. Love is addiction and you are my Nicorette. Love is a drug like chocolate like cigarettes, I’m feeling sick I’ve got to medicate myself.”

The concept was figured out. I would write 12 love songs. Each in their own way as brutally honest as possible. Fear not, there is no smooth sounding e-piano anywhere on the record. I wanted to make love songs in a way that I had never heard before. Of course, these thoughts border on delusions of grandeur, but why not? If I couldn’t allow myself that, then the next option was fear. I would rather pretend to be a prince than feel like a prisoner.

From Montreal I bounced to Miami. I started writing with Jodi Marr again. Miami never felt so good. I remembered how, at our lowest and most broke, Jodi re-mortgaged her home in order to pay for the demos we were making. I then went to Los Angeles, back to Miami, Montreal, New York, France, and over and over again. I started to feel myself again. So when it got to last summer, I thought why not release Elle Me Dit in France. I thought, what can I lose? I won’t promote it, we’ll take it straight to radio and see what happens..? I was advised not to release it, it was so out of context and there was too much risk. In the end I went for it. I wasn’t going to stop myself from putting something out just because of fear. fear of what?! The only reason things were flowing so fast was because fear was out of the equation. I wouldn’t let it in again. The record did better than we ever could have hoped. More than anything, the sucsess of the single fuelled my drive even more.

Fast forward to today. The songs are written and we are over the half way mark recording them. The hiding has been worth it in every single way and no part of me regrets it whatsoever. Now I have to finish it and I will! ;) it will be up to you to make your minds up as to what you think of it. At least it was made with honesty and an enormous amount of joy. I can not wait to share it with you. Along the journey all these people have joined in somewhere somehow, each one massively important; Nick Littlemore, Paul Steel, Fryars, William Orbit, Doriand, Priscilla Renea, Bilboard, Hillary Lindsay, Ellie Goulding, Pharell Williams, Benny Benassi, Martin Solveig, Klas Ahlund from the Teddybears, Wayne Hector, Fanny Ardent and Greg Wells.

Through this record I’ve had a breakup, fallen very much in love again, felt like the teenager that started doing this years ago and come to peace with many things in me and around me. There are so many things I want to share, and will do so in time. For now, I beg your indulgence over the next months and know that the hiding is for a reason. I will go home for Christmas. In fact I’ve finally grown up and moved. Although to be frank, buying my own place is one of the daftest things I could have done, as in the year that I’ve had it, I’ve only been there a total of three weeks. Right now home is where this record is. I can worry about being a house man, when I’m done ;)

Mika x

On a cold January morning this year, I made my way up the winding roads of upstate Connecticut. I was nervous, not only because I was the one doing the driving (I am a terrible driver), but because this felt more like a pilgrimage than a meeting. After getting lost I finally found a discreet painted wooden house, secluded in the middle of a dense forrest. I had arrived at the home of ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ illustrator, Maurice Sendak. Walking into the house, I came across a short, elderly man, dressed in his pyjamas and sitting at the dinner table talking loudly on the phone. When finally presented to him, he looked at me softly and smiled - “you’re very young”, he said, “I’m 82, have a seat”.

Over the next three hours, I glimpsed into the life of a man who’s work has been one of the biggest creative inspirations in my life. Sendak is most famous for the Wild Things but has illustrated over 100 books. His art has reinvented illustration and children’s books, the same way Norman Rockwell reinvented the art of marketing illustration. He lives with his female assistant and friend. With visitors he is generous with his thoughts and time but prefers to work and listen to Schubert. He does this in the same room that he sleeps in, working endlessly, desperate to achieve and leave behind a body of work as good as his heroes, William Blake and Keats.

If I hadn’t become a musician I would have become an illustrator. Illustrations work in a very similar way to pop songs. In pop songs, melodies and lyrics have to be direct. They work best when something indescribable is created out of the most simple ingredients. It can take only seconds for a song to grab your attention. Illustrations have to do the same thing. The lines seem simple and the image quickly understandable, but what goes into it can take as much skill as any painting in the Louvre. In this way, Sendak is the Beatles of the art world.

When sitting with Sendak, it is hard not to feel like you are sitting with one of his characters come to life. Small, big faced and bursting with expression and one-liners. He is a perfect combination of wickedly cynical yet constantly in awe of art and music. It gives him a childlike quality. His ‘Jewishness’ is almost exaggerated. He speaks bits of Yiddish, often with a raised voice and theatrical flair. Many people are unaware of the massive influence Eastern European (mostly Jewish), fine artists from the 1940s, shaped the imagery of their childhood to this day. Fleeing war and political instability, many eastern European painters emigrated to the USA. There they found themselves out of work, with paintings that had no hope of making money. It was in the booming publishing industry that they found a future. With the development of cheap high quality colour printing, books and magazines flourished and illustrations were needed to fill them. The skill of the emigré artists revolutionised illustration. The drawings were still direct and pop, (the publishers made sure of that), but they had a wealth of sophistication and training behind them. Artists like Gustaf Tenggren and Tibor Gergely would later be poached by Walt Disney and many were responsible for creating the intricate visual world of many Disney classics, including Snow White, Disney’s first full length film.

The resentment that some of these artists felt was not unjustified. They were for a long time the unsung heroes of pop culture, rejected by the fine art world, and underpaid by the mainstream companies. How things have changed. I got my first job at eleven after being expelled from school. Unable to read and write, my mother decided to give me a new start and keep me out of formal education for almost a year. During that time I learnt to sing, play the piano and would stare at the pictures in children’s books. The pictures were far more important than the words and there began my obsession with illustration. A couple years later, after I finally managed to save some money, I used all the cash I had to buy my first drawing. It was a watercolour by Jim Woodring, of a bunny called Frank. Frank is drugs, sex, insecurity, happiness and fear. The only thing is, Frank doesn’t speak, there is no text in his comics and he lives a made up surreal fantasy land. Somehow, all these emotions are still communicated and crystal clear. Frank was subversive but my parents had no idea. My Frank picture cost me $300, a fortune at the time. I didn’t stop there. Whenever I made money, I found a picture to spend it on. By the age of 17 I was already trading and selling my pictures online. I often kept this addiction secret from my friends, embarrassed of some of the risks I was taking. It seems I was by no means alone. A whole generation who has grown up with illustration art refuse to see it as merely something disposable. Those Tengrenns and Gergelys that were once given away, can now fetch over a $100,000. How they would turn in there graves!

Now for the illustration on my latest article! My illustrator sister Yasmine, who goes by the pen-name DaWack, thought it would be fun if one of you would illustrate my next article. So, if you would like the chance to illustrate next month’s column, make your own illustration inside the frame, scan it and email it to feedback@xelle.it with ‘Illustrazione Mika’ in the subject line by the 13th May and we will then choose our favourite…

Check out the paper’s website here: http://xl.repubblica.it/

I was late. Traffic in London on this February night, had brought the city to a standstill. It was the premiere of the highly anticipated Anna Nicole Opera at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. I abandoned my taxi and ran. A red carpet greeted celebrities as they walked in and the entire run of the show had long sold out. This was not a normal premiere, but it was not a normal show. Telling the story of American TV and tabloid celebrity Anna Nicole Smith’s life, this was a new commission and had been in development for over 5 years.

I had been so excited that I had specifically requested to review the opera for La Repubblica. By the next morning I had cancelled my piece. Angered by what I had seen, I didn’t want to contribute to the media frenzy surrounding something that had missed the point in so many ways.

Since I saw the first episode of her reality programme in 2002, I always liked Anna Nicole Smith. I respected her story, I liked the way she smiled and more than anything I felt compassion for her. I found her eccentricities funny but over all I felt sorry for the tragedy she endured in the last few years of her life. Anna Nicole was born in a small town in Texas, moved to Houston as a single mother at the age of 20.

She found a job at a strip club and within a few years was posing for the cover and centrefold of Playboy magazine. It was at this time that Anna began her relationship with J. Howard Marshall, a billionaire oil tycoon. They eventually married, she was 27 and he was 89. She was successful as a model, even replacing Claudia Schiffer as the face of Guess. At this stage, her classic beauty didn’t hint at her turbulent life, which would later steal the limelight.

Her billionaire husband died just over a year after their wedding. The legal disputes over Anna’s share of her husband’s fortune lasted over a decade. Anna eventually filed for bankruptcy and became a household name as a result of her much publicised case. In 2002 her reality TV show premiered on E Network. I was hooked. It lasted 2 years before being dropped. The show was a critical disaster and launched Anna into the final and most dangerous stage of her life. Now addicted to the media attention and living beyond her means, she became a parody of herself. Drug abuse became more and more evident. The worse she behaved the more attention she got. Once again, a celebrity’s demise became popular entertainment.

The death of her shy son Daniel was the beginning of the end. His death was as tragic as they come. He died from an accidental overdose, whilst visiting his mother in her hospital room and some reports say he was in her bed. Five months later Anna Nicole was found dead in her room at a Florida hotel, with seven different prescription drugs found in her body.

It is hard to imagine anyone reading this account of her life and not feeling some sort of compassion. The televised scenes of her sitting in the back of a limousine begging for pickled gherkins were ridiculous, but if you didn’t like her then you didn’t have to watch. Some women pass her off as a gold digging slut, who even posed for pornos. So what? Many people I know are gold diggers and they don’t get the same abuse she did. And why judge someone for making porn. It seems to be that as soon as a porn star becomes more than a faceless piece of meat, they become reviled.

The only reason she was so hated by American media in particular, is because her and her situation got ugly. It was too in our face, there was nothing hidden. Anna became a mirror to the over medicated and indulgent and a parable to the dangers of exploitive media. She became too real.

I went to the opera with a hope that some part of this story would be put right. I wanted the audience to see part of themselves in her. The first half was full of promise. The score by Mark-Anthony Turnage, was undeniably brilliant. Flicking between a-tonality, jazz and even hints of Sondhime melodic lyricism. The Libretto by Richard Thomas was eloquent and unapologetic, even if it did feel insincere. Storming through her life the audience laughed and laughed but that never that transcended into worry, compassion or self examination. Instead of black comedy or a Brechtian montage, Richard Jones’ direction left us with clever but cynical pantomime. Throughout the first half no empathy was established between the audience and Anna. Her son’s death in the second half comes as a sudden bump with no real emotional pay off.

The saddest thing of all was that that was exactly how it felt when it happened in real life. The Opera could have done this mother and son story more justice. Anna was sacrificed for a laugh and made a villain in the media. The Opera could have created and reinvented an archetype and tragic protagonist as meaningful as any other operatic heroines. Sadly for Anna Nicole the opera failed to do that. It made many people laugh and made me sad because it seemed such a waste of a modern tragic true story.