Mediocre Mika

A poll on the Queen community, touting someone called Mika as the next Freddie Mercury, got me searching on the net for more information about this new kid. After repeatedly listening to Mika’s music (both on YouTube and on VH1) and hours of wading through the comments columns of the various online Mika forums, I have to admit I’m Laughing My Fuckin’ Ass Off. I’m LMAO not as much by Mika’s music but by his being so undeservedly compared to someone as awesome as Freddie Mercury. Their Asian origins apart, their childhood spent as emigrants, introverted childhoods, their interests in opera, their love of the piano and similar voice modulations in their songs may all be suggestive of both being cast in the same mold, but it would be plain common sense to see that Mika has modeled himself on Freddie. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Mika is the “sincerest” singer I’ve come across. But, to pass a judgement that Mika is the next Freddie is pure misinformation, not just for the simple fact that there just cannot be another Freddie Mercury - ever, but because Mika is still a one album wonder and still has a long way to go to merit any comparison with any decent musician let alone the Queen great.

As for Mika's songs, “Grace Kelly” has a freshness associated with it, something I haven’t seen for a long time (11 million plus views on YouTube and still counting). It is No.1 on the billboards, maybe a deserving position, but I feel that the rating is something it owes to the lack of more appropriate contenders than its own merit. “Love Today” has a nice video and is a bubbly song with a good guitar work in the background and is bearing the brunt of overkill on VH1 of late. “Relax, Take It Easy” (horrible video) and the others are typical pop songs predominantly inspired by Queen though I could detect other influences as well. Just hearing “Lollipop” was almost enough to make me, as Monica Geller of Friends would say, “Laugh So Hard That A Little Pee Came Out.” No, I’m not a Homophobic Bigot, but if you still want to compare Mika with Freddie after hearing such a catastrophical song as “Lollipop”, you need to see a shrink at the earliest. Mika has been very lucky to have a hit like “Grace Kelly” so earlier in his career unlike the long struggle Freddie had before “Killer Queen” came along. Freddie had his inspirations in Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin too, but he never modeled himself or his songs on them and nor was he ever compared with them. Freddie's originality, in his songwritings and his onstage antics, was what made him what he is today, a legend. Freddie, as a performer, was what other singers strived to be, a fact enviously acknowledged by even Kurt Cobain in his suicide note.

Mika’s genre is Pop, maybe too much of a pop for my tastes, and even the inkling of a comparison of him with the multi-facetious predominantly rock star like Freddie Mercury would seriously put the question of ones sanity in jeopardy. Whatever little similarity that exists between them, ends with their voices, unless one wants to include Mika’s Sexual ambiguity as something common with Freddie’s open Bi-sexuality. Mika may have been the best Pop artist to come out in the UK after the Spice Girls, but he merits no comparison with Freddie even in his wildest dreams; he just doesn’t have the versatility or the personality of Freddie Mercury especially on-stage. If Mika can bring about songs that are even half the class of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We Are The Champions” or “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, I’ll not only eat my words but, give up listening to Queen, for ever.