Important PR Announcement Dissected
This is an advert for the new single 'Grace Kelly' by Mika. Or Squika, as anyone who has heard him sing must surely be calling him by now. I've watched it a quintillion times (OK, three times) and I have no idea what it means.
You can sort of see the idea behind it, right? It's like "Hey, you kids! I know you normally like a certain kind of thing, when you're buying those GHASTLY pop records you like, but wouldn't you rather have something MASSIVELY DIFFERENT and A BIT SUPERIOR and therefore REALLY COOL?"
And to be fair, there's not a pop act in the world that hasn't tried to send exactly this message out...I mean Chico is massively different, so's Lily Allen, and so are Arctic Monkeys. Each one, in their own way, convinced that they are the saviours of the musical day. And they're all right too. Even Chico, who saved us all from taking last year's X Factor seriously in any way, shape or form.
That's what all that 'purple pop stars' bit is about, by the way. Mika is telling you pop kids that you're all too stupid to understand that you need to have a proper variety of pop star in your charts (like you need bran in your diet to help you poo). And that he is exactly the kind of different person you, the kids, need to keep everything regular, y'know...DOWN THERE.
He's wrong, of course, but hey, thanks for telling us all what we think in such a charming fashion, fella. Now we all REALLY like you.
Ultimately, there are three things about Mika which are worth saying...to his face.
THING THE FIRST: You probably don't want to be claiming massive amounts of originality and brilliance if your song sounds precisely like the Feeling doing a Darkness cover (or the other way around). That's, like, retro squared.
THING THE SECOND: And if you're gonna claim that you're the pop star that THE BUSINESS can't handle cos you're so different, try not to do so in a time when record companies are desperately grabbing every other singer songwriter with a decent understanding of the Queen/ELO/Wings/Supertramp '70s pop back catalogue, from Luke Thoms to Duke Special and back again. It just means you and everyone like you, Mr Mika, are the new shade of purple pop star. Meanwhile Nelly Furtado is getting all the attention for being actually different. Isn't irony annoying?
THING THE THIRD: Could you not be a little, I don't know...MEEKER, MIKA? If you just settle down and go back to trying to actually charm people into liking your songs, who knows, there may even be a place for you at the big pop table. But if you go about calling the other guests names and pulling their hair for no reason, you'll be asked to leave, just like every other snotty wannabe has in the past.
And to help you get started, a link to your official website for all the boys and girls to go and look at...now...BE NICE...
That wasn't a dig at Prince, was it?
[Dunno. I see what you're saying, but there's hardly lots of Prince-type pop stars around at the moment, are there? - Fraser]
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