MIKA: Life in Cartoon Motion (2007)

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Like many of the things I like liking, I came to MIKA unexpectedly.  I first heard “Grace Kelly,” his best-known single, on a Community fanvid of all things (a humorous little video about the Dean, in fact.)  I got a kick out of the video, and the song itself was a delightful earwig.  Important youtube research naturally followed, and I spent a lovely bit of time enjoying a nice assortment of MIKA music videos.

 

MIKA, I should tell you, is a British/Lebanese singer-songwriter.  From what I can tell, he’s far more famous in Europe than he is in the U.S., but that’s a shame, because he’s tons of fun.  His infectiously upbeat pop-rock, not normally my style, makes me all kinds of happy, and I like his quirky sensibility as an artist – his music videos are creative and colorful, and his CD liners are amusingly illustrated.

 

Life in Cartoon Motion is his debut album.  It’s where “Grace Kelly” hails from, a ridiculously catchy number that playfully explores the nature of fame.  In it, the tongue-in-cheek MIKA begs to be told how to improve his marketability, offering to be wholesome or loathsome, hurtful or purple.  He toys with imitation, from Grace Kelly to Freddie Mercury, and forever asks why we don’t like him.

 

The albums features other bouncy, lighthearted fare, like “Big Girl (You are Beautiful),” MIKA’s answer to “Fat-Bottomed Girls.”  As with so many musicians, relationship woes loom large in his work.  Some maintain the same peppy pop beats (I just love the driving piano line on “Stuck in the Middle,”) while others, like the gorgeous “Happy Ending,” are a bit slower and more thoughtful.  MIKA himself has an engaging singing style that flits in and out of falsetto like a game of keep-away.  Again, it’s not something I’d ordinarily go for, but he just works for me.

 

I like the way that even the sadder songs aren’t entirely devoid of the joy that pulses through MIKA’s work.  “Happy Ending,” with its understated verses and its mournful chorus of “I feel as if I’m wasting, / And I’m wasting everyday,” gains an exuberant gospel choir in the second half.  The introspective “Any Other World” is soft and gentle whenever MIKA is singing, but an almost triumphant string section floods the instrumental segments.

 

The album’s not perfect by any means.  There’s an unfortunate tendency towards repetition in both the music and the lyrics (“Lollipop” is especially thin,) and a few numbers veer a little too close to The Bee Gees for my taste.  Inevitable, I suppose, when you favor falsetto and danceable beats.  Still, I really adore Life in Cartoon Motion, and putting it on is a great way to infuse my day with a little melodic whimsy.