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14.09.12 Music Week 39
RDEST PEOPLE IN POP’
It certainly seems to be paying off – you’ve got gold and platinum awards for your music in 32 countries… It’s cool but the first album sold brilliantly in the UK, while on the second one my sales really suffered. At the same time I still was able to get to about two million [global sales] on the second album thanks to the fact that I can sell my record in pieces all over the world. Of course I want to improve on sales in the UK and I’m actually quite confident that I will. I am a UK artist, I was educated by UK music schools, I was signed in the UK by Island and by Lucian Grainge.
I was all these things – but at the same time I
am multi-cultural, I speak a few languages, I put out records in different languages and that is reflected in the pattern of my career.
“For the next three months I am pretty much, on average, in a different country every 48 hours. Right now, they’re trying to get me to do two countries in Europe on the same day, [laughs]... it’s ridiculous!” MIKA
How did you select your collaborators for your new album?
I said to Island that I wanted to work with people that inspired me, so I asked my manager Iain Watt and my label – Louis [Bloom], Darcus [Beese] and Tom [March] – and was just like, “Look, why don’t you find the weirdest people in pop music who have the most success from time to time but make really credible records. Why don’t you introduce me to a whole bunch of stuff?” I listened to records for about two months and got excited about all these weirdos in pop music and it started me off. With someone like Nick Littlemore, we’d walk into a room together and we write a song and that’s it. It’s immediate. He creates an atmosphere that I can write in and it’s an obvious fit.
Sounds great… It’s quite old school, you know. In LA in the Seventies there was so much cross-pollination on records, you were looking at a time when pop music wasn’t made in expensive studios with so much isolation. Pop music was a lot of cross-pollination and collaboration and exchange and there was a sense of community. In urban music you’ve got a community, classical music, even in folk you’ve got a community but pop has lost that sense completely.
Do you think that’s just modern pop or do you think it’s been like that for quite a while now? I think it’s been like that for about 10 years. I think the reason why that’s started happening is because people do things more on their own. But actually now with the internet, it’s so much easier to work in a community more than ever. Even if we’re not in the room together we can just send each other sessions within two hours.
I’m performing in the [radio stations’] studios as well. I’ve been travelling around with my guitarist; we walk in and we sing, we chat, we take photos, we sign and we get back in the car. I’ve had fans waiting outside in some places but most of them are pre-recorded so it makes it a little easier.
From all of your years in the business what have been the most important lesson that you’ve learnt? You can never predict what happens in music careers and you just have to think globally. You have to think long-term. Even if I was managing an artist I would think like that: “Where would we be in three years?” “What’d we try and be in four years,” or whatever.
And where do you think you’ll be in three or four years? I’d like to start making records for other people. I have written for others, sometimes under fake names. I have multiple girls’ names [laughs]. Recently I’ve been writing more under my name as well. Not just writing, I got to make other records for other people. I have this dream of making soundtracks for films. I’d love to score a film but I need to be ready and I’m not ready yet.
What’s been the highlight of your career journey so far?
The chase. And the fact that I can walk around a town in Spain and just be completely free and then stand up on stage and play in front of 2,000 people.
Is the single giving you some promising signs? It’s just been serviced to radio and Radio 2’s Record of the Week which is good because that’s what they do before they playlist and then we serviced it last week to regional stations.
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