| |
 |
|
|
 |
| |
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
MIKA IN BEIRUT
 Beiteddine Festival in collaboration with Baalbeck Festival & NRJ - July 27
MIKA
Mika wants to set the bar for fantastical, 3 dimensional pop at his own height. Which is over 6’ and statuesquely sculptured, since you ask.
Welcome to his world: where some louche dilettante is throwing the greatest party in the universe and everyone is invited under his very own cherry moon. Mika is a songwriter, performer, producer and orchestrator and he has unleashed his debut album to the world. Both astonishingly musical and profoundly thoughtful, his tunes combine a heady euphoric rush with darker unexpected elements: daytime melodramas and night-time tales of love, loss, abandonment, hope and happiness. They all jostle together for attention, each one a pure pop golden nugget.
Mika is a true young internationalist. Born in Beirut in the middle of the 80s, Mika’s family soon found themselves having to move to Paris at the height of the war. When his father was subsequently taken hostage and held at the American embassy in Kuwait the family eventually settled in London. An inevitably turbulent experience for our young hero, he found himself bereft, lost in the chasm of a displaced upbringing. “It was the combination of moving as well as a horrible time I had at school in the first few years of living in London that lead me to forget how to read and write, and stop talking for a little while. I was pulled out of school for over six months; in order to sort my self out and find a new school. This is when music really became important. It got me back on my feet.” He says now that by the age of 9 he knew that songwriting was his destiny. The electric performances that would win over some of the most hardened musical ears on the planet would come later.
A self-taught piano virtuoso, gymnastic vocalist and born entertainer, Mika has music in his bones and at a prodigiously young age he was ready to show out and let go. Mika wasn’t hunched over a radio under his bedclothes or seduced by the glitz of "Top of the Pop’s" on the TV screen when he had his first performance awakenings. Instead, he was catapulted onto the stage of a Richard Strauss opera at 11. After near complete social exclusion at school - “I wish I could say I was a self-imposed loner but it was imposed on me” - this was a life he fell in love with, instantly: “It was a magical world that you could live in. A parallel universe for people that is illusory and enchanting and amazing.”
For the last 12 years of his life he has followed his maxim of a parallel universe to its natural conclusion and is now presenting his dynamic, idiosyncratic and unashamedly personal debut album. “I grew up listening to every thing from Joan Baez and Dylan, to Serge Gainsbourg and Flamenco. My musical tastes have become more eclectic as I’ve got older, but I'm always going back to great artist songwriters, people who make great records to their own vision. Prince, Harry Nillson, Elton John, even Michael Jackson. These people make amazing pop records that couldn’t be performed by anybody else and that’s what I always wanted to do.”
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FERGIE IN DUBAI
 Universal Music's biggest artists will be performing live in Dubai:
Fergie on May 16th in Festival City, Dubai.
Win 2 exclusive concert tickets to see Fergie.
Text the word Fergie followed by your name to 1066 and have the chance of a lifetime to see Fergie live in Dubai
NRJ, brings you closer than ever to the stars…
NRJ, Hit music only! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MARIAH CAREY IN DUBAI
 Universal Music's biggest artists will be performing live in Dubai:
Mariah Carey on May 15th in Festival City, Dubai.
Win 2 exclusive concert tickets to See Mariah Carey .
Text the word Mariah followed by your name to 1066 and have the chance of a lifetime to see Mariah Carey live in Dubai
NRJ, brings you closer than ever to the stars…
NRJ, Hit music only!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
