MIKA GIGS

Cover art, merch, design collaborations

"I have this fascination of reality. I think, if anything, I like to take reality and just to kind of hype it up, I like the idea of hyper reality, and you can put that into a pop song." - Mika / Live In Cartoon Motion DVD:  A Long Way From Home documentary

There's an entire world built around Mika's music and for a listener it's a different, in many ways more beautiful place than our real world is. I discovered that world at my first gigs years ago, I wanted to stay there and after that have loved visiting it again and again. Going to gigs gives a full experience but visiting it in a smaller way can happen simply choosing a song at home or - like I enjoy doing every now and then - spreading some colourful designs on the table, just looking at them and letting them inspire. A big part of the world around Mika's music is abstract and means emotions, even strong ones, energy that can be either intense or totally calm, and allowing ourselves to see genuine beauty in every moment, whether light or dark. 

At gigs there's a lot of visuality that supports the music in outfits and show elements and a part of that can have an intangible source as well: the elegance can be related to the way the outfits are carried, the attitude can be seen in the bold use of colours or the pose on stage and sometimes the beauty can come from pure simplicity. Outside gigs and available on a daily basis, visuality appears in album cover art, in tour merch, in stunning photo shoots, in different design collaborations and in special projects that might include videos or illustrations. Below I have collected examples of visual elements we can enjoy outside gigs and tours (about visuals on stage in Styles and looks  and in Stages and show elements). The quotes are from interviews included in different special editions. 

Personally I rather focus on experiences and moments than material objects so I have not bought every single item released during years. At the same time I'm very much aware that all the material related to each album era is available only a very limited time. A few times I have regretted not buying something, like the Parc des Princes poster with the circus illustration or the stunning photo prints by Peter Lindbergh, and these days I try buy the items I know I will love for sure and want to have at home before they sell out. For me the most interesting items are vinyls and other special edition albums, cover art prints and tour posters, tour books and good quality magazines with gorgeous photo shoots as well as for example tour mugs which I love to use every day at home because they make me remember the tour moments. 

Beautiful things should be enjoyed fully so I have had the posters and prints professionally framed and the ones that don't have a suitable spot in other rooms are spread around my upstairs hallway where I can see them whenever I want. Small items are grouped in a glass cabinet and magazines and concert booklets make piles here and there in the same upstairs space. I took a lot of photos for this summary and at first thought that separate photos of different objects would look tidy and describe the objects better to those who haven't seen them, but in the end it didn't feel right. I didn't want my site to look like an online catalog. It feels more respectful, more loving to show the objects as a part of my everyday life - as they are - so in the end I spread different items on my desk and the photos below show how they look there even though it's a bit messy. My son uses the space for painting, that's why the tabletop easel. I brought the skull from my gig trip to Mexico and bought the green glasses from a flea market in Barcelona when there was a gig last summer.

Going through old video interviews from different editions of Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much was an interesting experience. The artist in the interviews is a young boy yet today's Mika is very much like him with his facial expressions, gestures, even spoken expressions, and I find that astonishing. In the Live In Cartoon Motion DVD documentary A Long Way From Home young Mika refers to famous people drinking, dancing and hanging out backstage at his showcases: "you have to pinch yourself and realise that they are there only for your music and not because how deep your personality is" and years later the comment is surprising because he might be correct with occasional influential people but on the other hand, people who follow his work in the long run are not there for one song or his fame or the hype around something particular, they are there exactly for his deep personality that comes through the music and can be seen in the visuality that supports it.

"You don't write songs for money, you write songs because they give you that little feeling, in the back of you spine or right here... That's why you write songs, because it makes you feel good, then you do it all over the next day." - Mika / Live In Cartoon Motion DVD:  A Long Way From Home documentary

Writing music, sometimes under huge pressure, can't always be that easy but listening to it gives for sure the audience the same, incredibly good feeling every single time. Both Live In Cartoon Motion and Live Parc des Princes DVDs include long and extremely interesting early interviews and also videos of the Jools Holland 2006 and 2007 television performances which I watched a lot in 2007 when I discovered Mika's music. What I particularly loved was the contradictions, that someone could be so young yet so timeless and classy already, that there was simultaneously that stubborn determination and the sophistication. I still love the contradictions and find them amazing, how someone can be so down to earth even though living in a different universe, so impulsive and at the same time very much considered and planning ahead. Contradictions are a big part of Mika's signature style in music as well, there's always the light and dark, the joy and sorrow, the happiness and sadness, even to extremes, even to an apocalyptic party. 

"The album work for the first album I originally created with my sister who goes with the pen name DaWack, it's filled with characters and it's kind of Alice in Wonderland in between world where things are very psychedelic...  a little bit strange but still very approachable in a very childlike way... So the visual side to me was just not something that went on as an after thought, it was really 50 % of what I do" - Mika about Life In Cartoon Motion artwork / Live Parc des Princes DVD documentary 

It's impressive to think the effort and time put into creating album visuals like the artwork for Life In Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much. The world has moved on from physical copies to digital music making that element maybe less important but the artwork is still a part of the (artist) image and it's pleasing to see vinyls coming back and the illustrations being used in prints and posters. Installations and designs collaboration like the store decorations in the Nicolas Feuillatte Paris champagne store add another way to introduce the visual side. 

"The DIY thing is massively important, not only in the stage show but also in the artwork and in everything, DIY gives it heart. If you don't have the sense of things being hand-made then you don't have heart, and it feels too shiny and vegasy and always a bit scary." - Mika / The Origin Of Love Korean magazine edition 

DVDs are in the past so almost an hour long documentaries with footage of creating albums or shows have evolved to shorter behind the scenes videos on social media but I'm  happy to get those as well and always hope Mika has moments in his life to be creative the way he did when he was younger because I imagine it being truly satisfying for him. I still, after years, regularly flip through magazine editions of different albums, admire the style in their photos shoots and watch video interviews to be reminded of what has happened during the years. The extremely stylish The Origin Of Love magazine edition (2013) includes a DVD with track by track explanations for different songs which I absolutely loved watching when the album was out and luckily we got similar style little videos when Que ta tête fleurisse toujours was released in 2023 even though this time only on social media. 

What I love most and what gives the strongest impression of the special Mika World is layering things the way it's done. Colourful lightning patterns from Life In Cartoon Motion (2007) illustrations are repeated in the 2024 pink rainbow suit and the Apocalypse Calypso tour mugs even though I can't tell if that was totally intentional or not. The 2013 and 2015 Swatch designs take example from the mask pattern in the Imaginarium (2010) tour poster, planets from The Boy Who Knew Too Much (2009) find their places and the shapechanging letters from Que ta tête fleurisse toujours (2023) become bubbly in the Nicolas Feuillatte champagne bottle. Colours from different album illustrations move fluently to design projects and the list goes on and on. When I look at everything I see patterns, motifs, themes and colours changing places like time or gravity couldn't affect them at all. In The Origin Of Love (2012) and No Place In Heaven (2015) the album artworks literally describe places. In The Origin Of Love we see someone's complicated mind, an imaginative jungle and a dreamlike sea. No Place In Heaven is located in a surreal city full of colourful buildings. My Name Is Michael Holbrook describes very much the inner world and in Que ta tête fleurisse toujours the way of being is almost floating.

"By saying that there's no place in Heaven I wanted to kind of build another world for this existent which is my world, it's not Heaven, it's not Hell, it's this kind of world that I illustrated, that I created, I did it with my sister, and that's why the album is this kind of cityscape, it's kind of city utopia ... Giving myself a context, giving my music a context, is something I have done from the very beginning. I feel much more comfortable creating an environment that my music can kind of live in. " - Mika / No Place In Heaven Korean magazine edition interview

Visuality works both ways and on the The Boy Who Knew Too Much special edition DVD Mika talks about writing the album and being inspired by visual references during it: "I get more inspired or influenced by visual references than I do from other people's music. Even when I was recording the album in Los Angeles I had a big wall in the studio full of collages of lots of different things, and that kind of mood board really influences me sonically." 

Of course, sometimes the music itself makes us visualise things in our minds and Mika talks about that in the Sinfonia Pop DVD filmed at Teatro Sociale Como (2015): "You can make it sound like a bit of light coming through the window, you can make it sound like a bit of cold air rushing through a hot room...To have all that texture, that subtlety and refinement at your fingertips..." Mika symphonic concerts are always my personal favourites and even the cover art and illustrations related to them are stunning: the Montreal symphonic album with beautiful blue tones and the special edition puzzle, the Como DVD including stunning photos and interviews and the gorgeous symphonic flower posters from both Montreal and Como. 

During years we have seen numerous collaborations and design projects Mika has done often together with his sister Yasmine starting from the Happiness Coca Cola bottle and To-Fu Dolls in different sizes in 2010.  The collaboration with Swatch led to three different Swatch designs in 2013 and 2015 and the collaboration with Pilot to a collection of colourful pens in 2018. Every design comes always in a beautiful, colourful box which is as important as the item inside. In Swatch Magazine (Nov/2013) Mika talked about the design process: "It was fun because for me the process is exactly the same as making music. I don't see any difference between the two. I think building a world and then developing it while remaining faithful to it, but without just repeating yourself again and again is really important. It's that combination of knowing where you come from and sticking to your language, but also expanding your vocabulary. I have to make something that is a part of my universe."

Mika Colours Paris was an art project Mika launched in Paris in March 2021. The project was done together with MAD Paris, the city and the outdoor advertisement spaces and it collected together 10 artists including Mika and his sister Yasmine. Thousands of posters for canceled events and exhibitions were replaced with colourful art posters highlighting the meaning of art and spreading positivity during the time when museums were closed and shows and concerts were cancelled. Because of the pandemic restrictions I wasn't able to travel to Paris that time but managed to later buy a poster and have it now at home in my bedroom. The poster saying "Stay High" is literally the first thing I see in the morning. Instead of colouring Paris it now colours my day.