Top Five Songs: No Place in Heaven (MIKA)

I have a lot of love for MIKA’s fourth studio album.  In addition to the catchy melodies, exuberance, and emotional honesty that I expect from him, it’s also the first album he made after coming out, and many of its songs touch on his sexuality in thoughtful ways.  Here are my favorites from the album.

“Talk About You” – The first number on the album starts off the proceedings with a bounce and a bang.  This insanely-catchy earworm is a joyous exultation of love, relishing in the kind of happiness that fills your head and heart and crowds out everything else.  The song wonderfully captures that joy, in melody as well as lyrics.

Best lyric:  “Walk through the city like stupid people do. / A million faces, but all I’m seeing is you.”

“All She Wants” – I really like this song.  In addition to, again, its wonderfully-catchy melody, it tells an interesting story.  The speaker (MIKA?  It’s hard to say exactly how autobiographical a lot of these numbers are) looks at the “arrangement” he’s made to maintain a wife he never wanted, describing the fantasy it allows both his mother and his wife to live out, with him playing a part but not fully being part of it himself.

Best lyric:  “All she wants / Is another little special arrangement, / A peculiar engagement. / Got a trophy wife that’s respectable / To avoid any spectacle.”

“Good Guys” – Lovely number.  It’s a tribute to gay figures of the past, those MIKA has looked up to and drawn strength from.  I like the heroes he name-drops, and I love the use of the Oscar Wilde quote – “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” – for the chorus.

Best lyrics:  “To my heroes that were dressed up in gold, / Only hoping one day I could be so bold.”

“No Place in Heaven” – This song, and the album it represents as a whole, really continues the theme MIKA set up with the title track on The Origin of Love.  But while that song mostly stuck to religious imagery, this song gets in the weeds of MIKA’s religious upbringing, his sexuality, and what he thinks about his relationship with God.  Here, he pleads with the Almighty, wanting to know “if there’s room in Heaven” for him.

Best lyric:  “In between those words we dare not say, / Do You think that You could learn to love me anyway?”

“Promiseland” – More religious ideas and imagery.  This bonus track ponders the effort MIKA’s put into “doing everything right” and still feeling like it’s been deemed not good enough.  The lyrics are excellent, and I adore the driving beat, especially the one that kicks in at the tail-end of the chorus.

Best lyric:  “Don’t occupy my throne - / Give me the crown I own.”