MIKA GIGS

US

Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, US 12/4/2022

After some changes in the tour schedule the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn became the very first gig of the tour. The area looked shady but the theatre located on Flatbush Avenue is a gorgeous, gorgeous venue. A historical one. An absolutely beautiful place for Mika to start the tour. What a feeling it was to see him walking on stage to climb on his piano to start Lollipop. I like this version of Lollipop that leaves space to listen to his voice and to watch him posing. He was finally there and it felt almost surreal to stand in the audience and watch him appear on stage. He started to sing wearing a dark plain outfit, no shirt underneath, looking beautiful and also extremely slim and vulnerable. During the second song Origin he suddenly ripped off pieces of his suit revealing red areas on the fabric that looked like human muscles and veins on his arm, on his leg and even on his chest. It was an odd sight but I was absolutely fascinated and intrigued by the symbolism. 

A few years ago I saw the Body Worlds exhibition built of real human bodies, using real veins, real vessels and muscles. The exhibition was both weirdly fascinating and somehow shocking and seeing Mika’s outfit reminded me of it. After the show I called my husband and told about the suit referring to the exhibition we saw together. “Macabre!” he said, sounding thrilled and I agreed. I was hoping to hear the full story behind the outfit, to hear how the thought continues even though I’m aware not every show element gets an explanation. Many times ideas are thrown in the air just to provoke people, to make them create their own stories, to introduce interesting visual elements to them.

After Origin Tiny Love was started at the piano and it was as always beautifully, beautifully done. Such a beautiful part of the setlist. During Relax the jacket was gone and I love Relax, it felt good to hear it again but with this statue-like sight in front of me I struggled deciding if I should focus on purely listening or taking photos and obviously I ended up doing both. During Ice Cream we saw some gorgeous dancing, we saw that daring Mika that can be a surprise even to himself, and during the song, like during several other songs as well, he took flowers from the suitcases located on stage and threw them to the audience.  Flowers are an important part of spring and the lovely tour illustrations with different flowers were a cool detail. 

After Ice Cream we saw Big Girl which is a must for North American audiences and Blame It On The Girls which has become a rare song. The latter one had been playing in my head for a while so I happily welcomed the live version and it brought back memories sounding fresh at the same time. After Blame It On The Girls it was time for the biggest ever surprise. It was time for Promiseland and what we actually saw was Hamed from Mashrou Leila on stage in front of us and I almost couldn’t believe it was happening. I love this collaboration. Promiseland has never sounded that good and now we had it happening on stage. 

For me this was the biggest highlight of the gig, one of the biggest highlights I had ever seen on stage. Doing the trip twice because of rescheduling felt a small effort. For this I would have crossed the pond several times. The Arabic tones in this version of Promiseland are not only astonishingly beautiful, they also embrace Mika’s Lebanese roots. I love this artist for who he is and I love seeing him expressing all sides of him on stage. He has Lebanese roots, he’s gay, he’s incredibly creative, he appreciates beauty, art and handcraft and he’s never afraid to show all that on stage and for me that’s an important part of his shows. I love seeing all that on stage, I love seeing all sides of him because I love them all. 

The setlist was well structured. After Promiseland we heard Underwater and Tomorrow and the whole middle part of the show became one big highlight and there were still some crowd pleasers, energetic songs and the final highlight to come. There are songs that I would love to hear but at the same time I understand it’s not easy to fit them on the setlist with every crowd. Underwater was beautifully done. The lights were off and the audience was made to sing and the situation was unusually calm and everyone was focused which created a strengthened feeling of connection. 

Tomorrow was a lovely moment full of pure pleasure and carefree atmosphere and Happy Ending after that continued the highlight successfully. Popular Song and Elle Me Dit are the crowd pleasers. Elle Me Dit worked surprisingly well with the Brooklyn audience. Both Grace Kelly and Love Today were made special with special intros and a gorgeous, very creative flowery suit also by Mira Mikati. Before Grace Kelly the audience was asked to do the Grace Kelly challenge. Love Today started with an exceptionally cool intro that gave me strong Dire Straits vibes and included a small speech. 

We are used to seeing Mika picking special, unique and handcrafted items for his shows and we saw beautiful examples of that throughout this first show of the Spring Tour. The flowery jacket during Grace Kelly and Love Today had crocheted (or crocheted like) colourful flowers and the long cape in the final Tiny Love Reprise and We Are Golden continued the same, very mikaish style. We had seen the story of the crown on Instagram earlier to learn to know the origin of it. When I saw the story I couldn’t imagine how this natural style crown would look on stage but combined the whimsical, flowery cape it looked simply perfect. Something carefully handmade that you can’t find in stores. Royal Mika. One of my favourite versions of him. He conquered the Kings Theatre, that’s for sure and the highly energetic We Are Golden was the final evidence of it.

Canada

History in Toronto, Canada 13/4/2022

The second show of the North American spring tour in Toronto, Canada, was as an experience different compared to the first show of the tour in Brooklyn. When the gig started I was happy but the most extreme excitement was already out of my system. I could finally focus on the story, the details, the little symbolic references. I will always remember this show for the people I met, for the warm, enthusiastic vibe in the audience and obviously for the new song, Modern Times. I was impressed by the clear, simple story that continued throughout the whole show from the beginning to the very end of it and was introduced by different visual elements and partly also by the setlist. Every outfit had their own place in the story. 

The story started with black like symbolising darkness and pain. Suddenly Mika ripped off pieces of his suit revealing a "view inside of him". The anatomy suit showed an image of the inside of the human body and watching the process was literally painful, almost like he was ripping off pieces of his skin and bleeding after that. The next step of the story started the healing. The white tank top had a “healed” heart on it and was combined with purple pants. The next step was Mika's flowery suit. The white suit had beautiful colourful spring flowers and the jacket also had Relax lyrics on it. The final step was the royal moment at the end of the show and we saw the gorgeous flowery cape with the word “RESIST” in the back and the handmade crown. In Toronto we heard Mika explaining how the theme comes from a quote by his mother “may your head always bloom” and suddenly it all made perfect sense. What a beautiful spring story, what a beautiful way to show love to his mother.

US

The Fillmore in San Francisco, US 17/4/2022

The third gig of the spring tour at the Fillmore in San Francisco offered a wonderful time. The whole night including the time the gig hadn't even started was like planned to put people in a good mood. This was my second time at the Fillmore. I looked forward to seeing both the crowd and Mika’s reaction to it, these two energies seem always to feed each other. I knew the audience would be loud and cheerful and that Mika would react to it but didn’t expect the night to be that funny and interactive. He’s such a showman and entertainer. He was very responsive to people’s comments and continued the jokes, flirting shamelessly here and there, occasionally laughing out loud after realising what just said. 

Before the gig people were asked to bring a flower with them and many did. Just before the show started Mika's team brought more flowers giving them out to people who didn’t yet have a flower in their hand and during a couple of the first songs and particularly during Origin everyone in the audience waved flowers and it was a beautiful flowery moment, I had hoped something like that would happen. It’s not easy to keep fresh flowers alive during a full gig but during a few songs it can be done and for a moment the crowd looked like a flower field and Mika could “pick” flowers from the field to stage which was a lovely detail.

During Tiny Love he started to flirt with a guy called Pablo and the situation evolved and became absolutely hilarious and Pablo became a part of the song intro. I had hoped we would hear the new song Modern Times again and that did happen and it felt right. The crowd was so good that it felt right to reward it with something special. Mika was wearing a bright pink suit and in the middle of the song the jacket was gone again revealing a very special “tattoo shirt” full of different motives like hearts and flowers and words like love, heaven and you are here. The shirt by Mira Mikati looked amazingly pretty and cool and it was a very special detail.

The audience responded really well to all songs, starting to sing during the first notes of Popular and jumping and dancing with the energetic songs like Love Today and even Elle Me Dit which worked astonishingly well considering the lyrics are in French. It was lovely to see Mika smiling the way he did during the whole night. In front of the energetic San Francisco audience and at the legendary Fillmore venue it felt very genuine. 

El Rey in Los Angeles, US 20/4/2022

Even though I had seen the venue before I had totally forgotten how lovely and tiny it was. This beautiful traditional style theatre venue offered absolutely perfect circumstances for a warm and intimate gig. The stage was so tiny the band could barely fit on it and I’ve seen front of stage photography areas bigger than the whole El Rey general admission area, the capacity of the venue is only 700-800 including vip areas and balconies. Incredible circumstances and an incredible performance. 

The gig was small and that way intimate but the first word that comes to my mind to describe the show is still professional. The performance was very professionally done, it was very considered, and that surely correlates to how I see LA as a city. It’s an important city for the industry and as usual Mika had celebrity friends and influencers in the audience and I can imagine it felt particularly essential to deliver them pure high quality. The set list started in an already familiar way and included the following songs in more or less this order:

Lollipop / Origin / Tiny Love / Relax / Ice Cream / Big Girl / Blame It On the Girls / Underwater / Tomorrow  / Modern Times / Happy Ending / Popular / Elle Me Dit / Grace Kelly / Love Today / Tiny Love Reprise / We Are Golden

One of the songs that impressed me most in LA was Ice Cream. I was astonished looking at Mika’s dancing and performing and kept thinking when did that happen, when did he learn to dance like that. Ice Cream is not my usual favourite but this time it was definitely a true highlight. Another song that I particularly loved on the setlist above is Lollipop, the version was totally different than before, slow and theatrical. 

 A typical thing for Mika’s North American shows is to see extremely loyal people who come to see him again and again even though there’s often years between the shows. I met the guy who gave Mika a cap he used for the special photo shoot with Peter Lindberg, a family that had filmed a cool video for the We Are Golden competition more than 12 years ago and several familiar people who I always see at gigs in the LA area. Mika spotted familiar faces and showed people he recognised them and before Grace Kelly he shared the story of Marvin’s hat. I particularly loved Underwater and Tomorrow and at the same time looked forward to Modern Times and would have been extremely disappointed not to hear it. After the show we also heard Mika’s next single Yo-Yo, not performed but played in the background.

Canada

Centre Bell in Montreal 25/4/2022 & Centre Videotron in Quebec City 27/4/2022 & Theatre du Palais Municipal in Saguenay 28/4/2022

After two already fantastic shows in Montreal and Quebec City Mika still managed to make the last show of the tour in Saguenay both extra special and extra memorable and I felt grateful for that. That kind of structure inside of the tour does matter, it has a meaning the first and the last show of the tour stand out and that really happened. The audience was enthusiastic and totally fresh. Seeing a show in Montreal, a city that has seen Mika several times is a different experience compared to Saguenay that saw Mika for the first time and I immensely enjoyed both observing the interaction Mika had with this new audience and being a part of the crowd. It felt good to experience the energy. He managed to make the gig feel important. Being as incredibly busy as he is, probably having a part of his thoughts already in his next project, he still managed to stay focused and make everyone at the gig feel there’s just that moment, like it’s all that matters, and I admired him for that.

We didn’t hear any new songs and I felt extremely lucky to have heard Modern Times at some previous gigs. In Saguenay he added Blame It On The Girls and a smiling version of Boum Boum Boum and it made my day and it made Saguenay’s day, the French speaking audience loved it. Tomorrow was performed during the same part of the show, meaning two good mood songs at the same time, so the atmosphere was guaranteed. The Underwater we heard in Saguenay was particularly lovely.  In the end of the song Mika asked a young boy in front to help him and together they made the audience sing and show lights with their mobiles. The Saguenay crowd was eager to wave their lights and this time the lights really looked like sparkling stars, it was so pretty.

Tiny Love Reprise in the ending part of the show was my favourite part of the set list throughout the tour. In Quebec City we heard an extremely powerful version combined with very strong lights. It was obviously meant to give a big surprise to the audience, I was listening and staring amazed. The version in Saguenay was more subtle but still and maybe for that reason even more touching. Such a beautiful way to end the show just before the final, iconic dance with We Are Golden. Mika knows how to get our full attention and once again he did everything he could on stage and after the show I felt light and very satisfied being able to end the tour this way. It’s always a bit melancholic to end things, especially after a special adventure like this, but the show in Saguenay was definitely a good way to do it.

This tour certainly exceeded my hopes. The outfit collaboration with Mira Mikati was outstanding, everything looked fabulous. Mika showed his best performance, he seemed focused and made the audience feel they matter during every single show.  He made the tiny venues feel intimate and he filled the arenas with his energy and he even made the first and the last show of the tour to stand out in these both aspects. It was the intimacy of the tiny venues and the beautiful, colourful performance at Coachella that impressed me most but each gig offered something extra. There were high expectations for Canada after that and he made it work, with visuality, energy and good mood.