American Radio Won’t Play Mika

Now there is a campaign to change their minds!

Calling all Americans who love to listen to the radio. Maybe you think that there is a good mixture of artists and their music on your favourite radio stations. If you do think that way, you would actually be wrong.

At the beginning of 2007, an amazing young popstar broke onto the airwaves around the world. His name is Mika, and his style is basically, “Retro-pop. His music is very reminiscent of the golden age of pop music, the sixties, but his songs have a new and refreshing feel to them, and his lyrics are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes controversial, and often tell a story.

The Mika song that Americans are mostly familiar with is, “Love Today’. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award for best dance tune, but he lost out to Justin Timberlake’s song ‘Lovestoned’. However, ‘Love Today’ is only one of six singles, released from his five times platinum album, ‘Life in Cartoon Motion’. The most successful single from that album is ‘Grace Kelly’, an absolutely awesome song, which he wrote, actually against the established recording companies, who always want to change a performer, before they will sign him, or her. Mika’s song is a defiant protest. He refused to be pigeonholed into something more acceptable to them, just to satisfy the recording executives, and he still will not conform! His courage, at going against established normality, is inspirational and he now has full creative control of his work. As far as I am aware, he’s the only artist to have won himself such freedom, and his work is a testament to that. He truly is unique.

But his unwillingness to conform has had a downside. American radio stations refuse to play his music! Many American Mika-fans have written, on numerous occasions, to their local radio stations to request Mika’s music. They are always ignored, and no real reason is given. Some of them say they object to Mika’s falsetto voice, which they claim, is too high for a man. Others are concerned about his song Grace Kelly. They think Mika wants to be a woman, because he has a line in the song, which says…

“I try to be like grace Kelly, but all her looks are too sad.”

But anyone with any brains would not take that line literally. It’s merely a metaphor. A lot of Mika’s lyrics are metaphoric. It just makes people think!