Brighton celebrates Pride in a massive and absolutely marvellous way. I was looking forward to the event since Mika was announced to headline their Sunday and I couldn’t wait to see him on that stage. I generally love Pride events. They’re cozy, they’re colourful, they make me feel home and they give hope that the world can be a better place, at least in that time and location, we all know it’s not equally good everywhere and for everyone. Pride line-ups are often my taste and that makes waiting for Mika’s performance easy. 

Brighton Pride - called Fabuloso - was all that and much more. I knew it’s one of the biggest Pride events in the world but didn’t understand in advance how huge it really is. The event was enormous and it was not limited to the two day festival, the whole town was literally coloured by the Pride. Everyone was joining. Not only every possible cafe, shop or other small enterprise around the Pride area but also schools, associations, healthcare centres, churches and sport clubs - just to mention a few - joined the parade that led to the festival on Saturday. The streets were busy with visitors, local families, even pets.

I arrived Brighton on Friday. I had two full days and decided to buy a ticket for the full weekend to be able to spend the Saturday first watching the Pride parade and then going to the event to already learn to know it. After realising how big the scale was I was happy to do that. It wasn’t ideal to go to such a massive event alone on Saturday but I’m used to going to different, even big, events alone and now I had time to walk around the very large park area. I found the Golden Circle close to the main stage and stayed there a moment listening to Sophie Ellis-Bextor and was surprised to suddenly see Mika’s former bassist Jimmy playing for her. After a lot of travelling I got tired quite quickly and decided to save my strength for Sunday which would be a full day the event opening at 1 pm and Mika performing after 8 pm.

The line-up for Sunday had four performers before Mika: drag artist Danny Beard, parody style ABBA tribute band Björn Again, a singer called Gabrielle and a group called S Club. The two first ones were more my style simply because I knew all the songs so it was entertaining to watch the performances, two latter ones were not familiar to me. I was probably a bit too old to know the last group but generally I rarely feel too old for events and particularly Pride events are full of people of all ages. It’s emotional and touching to think of that and to know it’s been hard for many people of my age and it’s sadly still hard for many young people in several countries and even in every country because not everyone is tolerant.

Mika started at 8.30 pm and did a full 1,5 hour performance. He had his non-French setlist that includes Elle Me Dit but even though EMD was written on the list it was left out and this time I preferred that way. There was a strict time limit once again and if something had to be left out I preferred it to be Elle Me Dit and not We Are Golden which had already been skipped several times and which, as a song, is more familiar and that way more suitable for the UK audience. The day was good in many ways before Mika’s performance and but the moment he took over the stage it became pure magic. There was something so special in the situation and the love coming from the audience that it’s hard to even put in words but he shined in a way I haven’t seen him shine for a while and those one and a half hours were filled with joy and happiness.

Performances like this remind me how much Mika is sometimes holding back his performing. He’s pushing boundaries every night, for example making fancy seated audiences stand up and dance in a way they have never done before, but he does that in an extremely discreet and the most professional way, step by step, carefully reading his audience considering what the crowd is ready for and what it’s not. This time, like already knowing this audience will only love and accept him, he came on stage his body language fully open, already owning the stage, took someone’s cowboy hat and was ready to flirt with the audience as much as needed. If the person having glasses “kiss me” thought he wouldn’t dare oh he did dare, as soon as he saw the glasses. 

He was talking about love and pride and sharing his own experiences making it very clear he’s aware that many people in the audience have been in the same situation as he was back in the days and that many people are in that situation right now and that’s one of the reasons these events are organised. Everything he said was genuine and not planned on a detailed level and the audience could definitely feel it, he was making himself very relatable. The next moment he was that icon the audience wanted to see on stage. He looked absolutely amazing just standing there. He had a dashing, fully confident posture and his every gesture was expressing the freedom he felt that moment and I couldn’t get my eyes off him and I felt happy and grateful with all my heart just to see him that way. I had a camera with me and I wanted to take photos but it wasn’t easy at all with so many people between us and the situation was quite overwhelming, it was a full body experience to watch him and to feel all the emotions.

I couldn’t stop admiring his every gesture like the way he was jumping along the new, gorgeous version of Origin while introducing the topic and starting to talk about love. Suddenly, the moment I was least expecting in the end of Big Girl, a huge amount of colourful streamers were shot above the audience and everyone was singing their hearts out, full of joy and wrapped in the paper ribbons in different colours (and yes I absolutely loved this moment and I love confetti in all forms and particularly in big amounts!). It was hard to calm down the adrenaline for Underwater after something that utterly amazing but the fantastic crowd at Preston Park did their part still well and thousands of lights were raised in the air and the view was absolutely beautiful. The incredible energy of the gig was definitely partly because of this incredible audience and surprisingly Billy Brown was one of my favourites during the night simply because the crowd took part in such a gorgeous way and I was admiring the audience almost as much as I was admiring Mika.

The moment when he appeared on stage for Relax in his red trousers wearing his giant red wings was the one I will never forget, just his pose and the look at his eyes showed he knew exactly how unbelievable it all was. We had never seen a Relax performance like that before but somewhere in the back of my mind I got a quick flashback from Popstarz at Scala in 2009 when he raised his silvery umbrella for Relax giving exactly the similar vibes. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him jumping with the wings that weigh 35 kg - honestly this slim man is pure strength - and after the song I was speechless and people around me were speechless as well. Afterwards this Relax seems to be the only thing people want to talk about and there will be a lot of talk about it years and years to come. The Brighton Pride crowd was rewarded for their love and acceptance with one of most stunning and most special performances ever seen on stage. 

A bit later the audience started to sing Happy Ending for him and after the song it was shouting his name and he looked at the crowd smiling and absorbing the love and my heart was totally full watching him. The whole night was a beautiful mix of feeling love and feeling freedom and I felt purely happy and I realised these two elements create my happiest concert memories, seeing him being so free in his performing and feeling the love both on stage and in the audience. In the end of Love Today the air above the stage was suddenly filled with fireworks and at this point I didn’t even know how to react any more, everything being so intense and wildly insane already. I had in advance wondered if there will be the big heart on stage in the end of the show but sometimes real life is more powerful than any show elements and we all can agree there was enough heart on stage already. In the end Mika and the band and the elegant choir gave smiling thanks to the audience and the crowd left chanting. I saw people singing Mika songs still at my hotel. What a way for Mika to do his first big Pride event, he couldn’t have made any stronger impression.