The Boy Who Knew Too Much
Most of my e-mail is from people hyping shoegazers. White college graduates with thin voices supported by jangly guitars. And if I don’t like what’s being purveyed, I’m seen as being hopelessly out of touch.
I’ve only ever gotten one e-mail about Mika, from an old buddy who told me his kids were gaga over him, had to see him at the Universal Amphitheatre. And he’d come to like Mika too.
I discovered Mika surfing the Internet. Not music blogs, but somewhere someone mentioned "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)".
Do you know this cut?
The joy is infectious! Not made by committee, obviously from deep inside the artist, this honest statement produced with everything including the kitchen sink is as irresistible as chocolate. It makes you want to throw your arms in the air and sing along!
I immediately downloaded the album, I became a fan. I wish I too had seen him at what is now called the Gibson Amphitheatre.
So I was eager to hear Mika’s new album, "The Boy Who Knew Too Much".
It’s not as good.
But that does not mean it’s bad.
And there are gems, like "I See You".
If I go to a desert island, one with a solar-powered iPod, I’m bringing along Elton John’s first American album, his second after "Empty Sky", the one that opens with "Your Song".
I almost never play "Your Song". At first I was enamored of "Take Me To The Pilot", but now my favorites are on the second side, "Sixty Years On", "The King Must Die".
Today’s music is made for the club, it’s a mass listening experience. Music is lubrication, aural Astroglide. Rub up against your desired one and take this person home. Nothing wrong with that, but I was never good-looking or self-confident enough to play this game. Music performed a different role in my life. It delivered an alternative universe, one in which I was surrounded by like-minded people, who understood me, who accepted where I was coming from. I didn’t go to the gig to stand and get jostled, I sat in my seat in rapt attention, as my favorites poured out their hearts.
The single off of "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" stiffed over here. Maybe justifiably, it wasn’t quite good enough. But listen to the acoustic bonus track of "We Are Golden"
Sans the pomp, the intimacy, the honesty shines through. It’s akin to New Radicals’ "You Get What You Give". But the piano and multi-tracked vocals make you feel included, you don’t feel like you’re being lectured, you just point your lips in the air and croon along!
Still, the piece-de-resistance is "I See You".
Instantly you’re enraptured, the piano adds heaviness, but Mika’s high vocal keeps the song from becoming maudlin. Within its despair, there’s hope.
What do you do with a record like "I See You"?
It’s not Top Forty appropriate.
And the AOR that would take a chance on tracks like this, akin to David Bowie’s "Andy Warhol" from three decades back, doesn’t even exist. Active Rock has you banging your head. AAA and NPR stations need something with an intellectual bent, for their hipster audiences. Whereas Mika’s mainstream. In a world where the mainstream is a desert, a vast wasteland. Yes, if you can sing, if you’ve got talent, a sense of melody, there’s nowhere for you to exist in today’s musical landscape.
You’ve either got to make Top Forty music, or appeal to the holier-than-thou outsiders.
I don’t hear a Top Forty hit on "The Boy Who Knew Too Much", the album’s already been deemed a stiff. But if baby boomers who’d grown up on Elton or Queen heard it, they’d be enamored. "I See You" would fit perfectly on side two of that Elton John album.
Yes, you could say Mika is derivative. But I’d called it inspired. He doesn’t sound like Elton, nor Queen, but he’s got the same sensibility, he uses his progenitors as a starting point, he’s journeyed on, in his own direction.
Is it a crime to have a good voice, a sense of melody, and a desire to make a crystal clear recording?
In the U.S., yes.
But maybe in the Internet age, the genres, the strict slots you need to fall into, can be obliterated, maybe something good can spread.
Maybe it isn’t this album. Queen didn’t truly break through until the fourth album, Elton had been around for years.
And I’m loath to tell Mika to just cut singles. He’s more akin to Kate Bush, he’s making a statement, a mini-novel. But that does not mean he’s got to wait three years to release another twelve song opus. How about three or four songs every six months. I can’t wait to hear more!
