Between Lady Gaga’s lace headpieces and Katy Perry’s berry-adorned bustiers, competition is fierce when it comes to making a statement in pop music today — at least when it comes to the ladies. Holding down the fort for outlandish musical men is British pop star Mika, who just a few weeks ago rocked a rhinestone mask and spacesuit at the Bestival music fest on the Isle of Wight.
“If you feel like you don’t belong to a particular kind of scene or trend, then you have to create your own world,” says the Beirut-born singer (full name: Michael Holbrook Penniman), who brings his funkdom to the United Palace in Washington Heights Friday. “If I don’t, I’m either everything or I’m nothing.”
Considering the Grammy nominations and comparisons to Freddie Mercury that he received for his 2007 debut “Life in Cartoon Motion,” not to mention the aforementioned stage attire and wild music videos, it’s pretty clear he’s encroaching upon everything.
Of course, it helps to keep good company. Along with knowing Perry “for, like, five years” and having Gaga attend “pretty much all of [his] New York shows,” the eccentric singer is on the Queen of All Media’s good side.
“The funny thing about Perez [Hilton],” says Mika, “is love him or loathe him, he’s a person of the masses. He’s very much a part of the mainstream, yet he supports things that are seen as more alternative.”
Mika’s “more alternative” world includes sold-out shows during which bubbles, balloons and confetti fill the air as he pounds the piano and uses the mike as a prop for dancing. A costume-clad band, puppets and wildly colorful stage sets invoke a pre-adolescent fantasy world and also help spawn sing-a-longs to crowd favorites such as “Love Today” and “Big Girl (You are Beautiful).”
For his follow-up, “The Boy Who Knew Too Much,” out now, he’s relying on the same eclectic formula to bring him success.
“I actually still like my first record,” he says. “I think a lot of artists reject their first record because it’s not something they’ve done themselves. They take the second album as the opportunity to show their true colors. But I don’t want to divorce myself with unnecessary brutality. I’m going to take it to the next step — have it be a little more cinematic and a bit bigger. The colors are still saturated; however, the landscape is still fantastical. The characters are all still there, but their ears are a little bit more pointy and their teeth are a little bit sharper.”
The better to taste him with.