Zoom-in Online

Every week, the music industry presents its public with a new crop of would-be superstars. And because of diminishing word counts, writers rarely get more than a few hundred words to describe their subjects, and a lot of details get left out.

To correct this problem, ZIO's latest weekly series, Late to the Party, will give its readers a more complete look at an artist by telling you what everybody, from staff writers at the top outlets to the bloggers hiding in their mothers' basements, has been saying.

People either love or hate Mika. He's just one of those things. Like disco from the '70s, or the Teletubbies.

In fact, if you've been keeping abreast of his press clippings, you might think he's both at once. Since the release of his debut, Life in Cartoon Motion, back in early 2007, the classically-trained singer-songwriter (born Mika Penniman) has been on the receiving end of both serious adulation and nasty ridicule, often for the same qualities in the same songs.

It all depends on what you read. His flamboyant, hook-stuffed songs have been called everything from "deliciously manic" to "infuriatingly catchy."

His impressive five octave range either earns him a warm comparison to Freddie Mercury or inspires vicious, though admittedly much more creative, prose. (Two favorites: "A singer who howls like his balls are trapped in a lightly greased sandwich toaster," and "Blessed with a formidable, elastic voice that he uses to sing like an insufferable jackass...")

Even the music's expectedly grand, squeaky-clean production (Island Records, Mika's label, furnished a generous budget), managed to polarize: the sound of the album was called everything from "kaleidoscopic" to "sterile".

Extremes aside (or perhaps because of them), Life in Cartoon Motion still sold over five million copies in the UK, mainly on the strength of "Grace Kelly" and "Love Today," two irrepressibly upbeat songs released when good news was hard to come by.
 

The success did little to win detractors over. The general mood among critics that year could generously be described as cranky, and more than a few writers eyed the album with wary contempt. "Exudes the allure of the most seductive pop, but does so with the calculation of a predator," snapped the LA Times.

"Shame on the person who made this," noted British music blog Drowned in Sound wrote. "Shame on the people who release, market and play this. And shame on anyone who buys it."

After a two and a half year wait, Mika's follow-up, The Boy Who Knew Too Much, hit stores last Tuesday, and his publicists braced themselves. Despite guest contributions from Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) and Imogen Heap, much of what had made Life in Cartoon Motion such a divisive success remained.

But even though the music hadn't changed significantly, the reactions did. There was an astonishing 20 point leap up from his debut's score (55) to The Boy's score (75) on reviews aggregator Metacritic, even as critics fixated on how similar the two albums were.

"Another set of over-the-top anthems!" Billboard declared.

"Anyone who liked Life in Cartoon Motion's bright, brash approach won't be disappointed," the All Music Guide assured.

So what happened? Did everybody just turn their frowns upside down? Did Mika get much better?

About the only certain thing here is that Mika didn't relent. All the snapping and gnashing that hounded him on his climb up the British charts seems to have instilled a resolve in both Mika and his fans, "as if Mika and his fans pictured themselves locked in a battle with the cynical and the closed-minded."

That quote, pulled, from an LA Times review of a show Mika gave there in 2008, referred to the appropriateness of the homosexual subtext of one of his earlier songs. But as a young, promising star who could single-handedly make jazz hands cool again, that kind of grit will be needed.