In a half-hour interview with Mika, the words “improbable” and “eclectic” came up regularly in his mouth. In France, we know him as an author, composer, performer, coach of “The Voice” or presenter of Eurovision 2021 in Turin. The artist is multifaceted. Born in Lebanon forty years ago, he has American and British nationality, lived for years in Paris and London, traced part of his path in Italy and is successful as far as Asia… He is undoubtedly the star the most cosmopolitan in office, one for whom the expression “citizen of the world” seems to have been invented. “I never see music with boundaries,” he adds, when 20 minutes met him on a Tuesday evening in November to talk about his new album, May your head always bloom, which comes out this Friday. The opus is entirely in French. A first for Mika.
“That your head always blooms” is your first album in French in a sixteen-year career. Why now ?
I wanted something new, to force myself out of my comfort zone, without knowing what was going to happen or what I was going to produce. I didn’t know if I was going to write an extremely intimate piano-voice thing or even if I was going to be able to write texts on my own. This fear of the unknown was fundamentally important. What happened was that I was able to talk for the first time about my relationship to French and to France, which exists but which I have never emphasized. I never recognized her to my international audience. I was 7 years old when I left Paris [où il était arrivé six ans plus tôt] with my family and I decided to make this album two years ago. It took me this long to get there.
Do you want to conquer the international public, impose these songs in French?
I never think of conquering or imposing.
I chose my words poorly… Do you hope that this album will make its way internationally or are you specifically targeting the French, French-speaking market?
I think it’s fascinating, for the people who follow me, no matter what country they are in. The tour, which will mix songs in English and French, was not supposed to leave France. However, all international shows are sold out [complets] or almost. In Berlin, we have just changed venue to an Arena, we didn’t expect that at all. It shows that eclecticism is a trademark with which people recognize me. I accept my improbable journey. I decided a long time ago to follow a path that was more poetic than strategic. This record is proof of that. I never see music with boundaries. Maybe because I grew up with classical music where it is not uncommon for it to be in other languages. I have the impression that this album intrigues Japan, China, South Korea and the Anglo-Saxons much more than the Italians. There may be something between Italy and France that I don’t understand, but they seem less interested there in a French-speaking repertoire…
You talk about assuming your link to France and the French language. How would you define it?
It’s very personal. I love the idea that the album could be more linked to the French-speaking world than to France. I always said that I was going to express myself in French but not pretend to be French. As it’s a part of my life, of me, I found it interesting to explain it musically, not just by speaking. There are things you can say in music in French that you can’t say just by speaking in French. Even though the words I use are quite simple, in the lyrics the messages are intimate and deeper. This candor in the lyrics is found in the letting go of the melodies which are very direct, very Anglo-Saxon pop in the DNA. It’s funny, it took me an album in French to accept and rediscover, in an almost adolescent way, this frontal side in my musical composition. That shows it was a good experience. Writing has been a refuge. Writing this way might have been more difficult in English.
The title of the album, “May your head always bloom”, is very poetic. It is taken from the lyrics of “C’est la vie”. Why did you choose this title?
That’s life is the last song I wrote. And choosing this title taken from the lyrics was obvious. It corresponds to a provocation from my mother. She was on vacation in Italy, very ill. She ended up in hospital in Rome, then in Milan. It was discovered that she had very aggressive cancer, a glioblastoma invaded his brain. He had to operate immediately. The doctors decided to send him to Salpêtrière in Paris. One of the last messages she sent me was this sentence, in English: “may your head always bloom, happy birthday”. It was accompanied by a drawing of me with flowers growing out of my head. I never thought it would become a song. A few years later, while writing, I understood that it was a provocation that she was addressing to me. She challenged me to be sure that I would remember this idea of creativity that comes out of my head, that I would remain faithful to the challenge that I had launched when I was younger and that we developed together. It was obvious that this sentence, which is the emotional, intimate center of this album, could be its title.
There is something very surreal about this image. Do you like surrealism? Would you have been comfortable with the hobbyists?
Of course ! I don’t know if I would have been comfortable, but it nourishes me. As well as more recent things, like the absurd. We have lost the poetic side of absurdism. I was a great friend of Dario Fo [décédé en 2016], I went to see him every Thursday for lunch. We even wrote a play together, which was never released.
Could it be played?
Yes. It’s about an old man and a young man who find themselves at the end of the world, the great apocalypse, together in bed. They’re trying to sleep while it’s a deluge outside. In fact, they are in a Department store and take refuge in the furniture section for the house… (laughter) Surrealism, Dadaism, the absurd inspire me. I love the contamination of disciplines, if we could have more of that, the world would be much more colorful and surprising.
The song “C’est la vie”, the first extract from the record, is full of contrasts. It mixes a disastrous dimension with a form of lightness, joy…
This is the key to understanding where this album comes from, why it exists. There is this idea that, even in the most difficult times, there is beauty. You have to allow yourself to recognize it and talk about it. This sadness was present in my last album and it was just that. We find it in this album but metabolized, transformed and it’s extremely joyful. What was sad in the previous one becomes joyful and dancing in the new one.
“What are these lines on my face?” Why do they come to find out my age? “, do you sing. You turned 40 this summer. Was it a complicated milestone to overcome?
To say no would be stupid. But I realized that I had done so much in the years before my 40th birthday that I could enter this age with this energy, that the ground was fertile. On stage, I was hot, hot, creative. I did a lot of festivals for two years to establish this thing, to say, for ten years, from 40 years old to 50 years old, I’m going to go there. I have my own language on stage, linked to my philosophy of life. So it’s important but not because I think it’s old, more because I think that, from 40 to 50 years old, you can do fucking beautiful things!