Mika has had his latest album, The Origin of Love, out for a few weeks now, but it looks like no-one in the UK is aware of this.
Yes, he is flying around the world, promoting “The Origin of Love”, but why hasn’t he been on the big UK chat shows? Why is his single barely played on UK radio? Why is he not asked to sing on X Factor or Strictly or the upcoming TV charity nights?
Fans campaigned to get Mika an interview on Radio 1 and airplay, but to no avail. Mika was left to do just interviews to local stations.
Radio2 played his single on occasion, but so little that it didn’t count. In the end only 99% of the population were aware of his album being out and it disappeared.
Was it to do with the single? Was it wrong? No, the same happened to any of his previously released singles.
Insiders explain: “frankly it wouldn’t have mattered what the single was. It wouldn’t have got played anyway. He seems to have effectively been blacklisted in the UK. The powers that be in the industry (those who decide what gets promoted and what is going to sell e.g. Radio 1 bosses) lost interest years ago. Nothing is going to do well here if Radio One won’t play him and no-one seems to know his album is out, most record companies aren’t even stocking it. No song or album is going to chart if no one hears it.
All this partly because of a negative image fostered by the snobby and snidey British music press. Mika was great when they heard Grace Kelly, he was different. But then he turned out to be a strange camp boy who liked coloured stage sets and funny costumes. Great if you’re Katy Perry (or, a girl) for a male singer: not cool.
I do think its the “serious” media/press that dislike him the most and have killed him. I remember watching Glastonbury on the BBC and Mark Radcliffe started slagging him off on air before they played his Grace Kelly track from the days performance. Very sad.
He seems to sit in a unique space between pop music and serious music, yet neither side seem to want to accept him in this country. He’s gay, he’s camp, he’s strange, throw it away. In the UK we now think he disappeared after his first album. It’s the same thing that happened to Beth Ditto and the Scissor sisters: they were new and different, but the media soon found them unmarketable and dumped them. Lilly Allen was different, but in the way papers like: kooky young girl sings about exes, sex, drunk nights, drama and the turnaround to housewife. Were she to release something the media would be all over her. Gay stars are not marketable in that way. Even if they’re George Michael.”
In France he reached no1 and his concerts were sold out
