By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up! @bugsburnett
British pop star Mika came out as a gay man in an interview with Instinct magazine last autumn.
“If you ask me am I gay, I say yeah. Are these [new] songs about my relationship with a man? I say yeah. And it’s only through my music that I’ve found the strength to come to terms with my sexuality beyond the context of just my lyrics,” said the 28-year-old singer who headlines Montreal’s Virgin Mobile Corona Theatre on April 6.
“This is my real life,” Mika then said about the songs on his current album The Origin of Love.
But I remember the handsome pop phenom played coy when I met him at the Auberge Le St-Gabriel in Old Montreal a couple of years ago. Mika turned to me, legs crossed, pretending to hold a cigarette, and did his finest imitation of Freddie Mercury.
“Yes, dahling,” Mika said à la Mercury. “Hello, dear!”
On this day Mika was very playful. “And he holds his beer like this,” he continued, imitating Mercury from the famous backstage British TV interview on the Queen – We Will Rock You: Live in Montreal 1981 DVD. “And he hardly drinks it!”
“You must get a lot of comparisons with Freddie,” I said.
“For being condescending?” Mika asked.
“No, for being fabulous!”
Not to mention dodging questions about his sexuality, a subject that – like Mercury before him – had dogged the singer since he first rose to fame. But when I asked Mika the pop star why he thought his private life wasn’t public property, he stared at me and replied, “Because I don’t offer it up for sale.”
Now that he has come out, Mika acknowledges the songs on his current album The Origin of Love are indeed about his relationship with a man. Fans can expect the pop star to sing many of his new songs at his April 6 concert at the Virgin Mobile Corona Theatre.
Meanwhile, Mika told me he himself prefers female singers. “When you’re a woman singing, you can evoke so many [poses],” he said. “You can be sexy, authoritative and ballsy. You can be motherly and confident, strong or weak, in need. Traditionally male singers don’t show vulnerability. Think of Sinatra, Mel Tormé, all the great singers [and] all the great [male] rock singers – they’re never really vulnerable.”
Then Mika copped another Freddie Mercury pose and said, “Unless they’re playing with gender.”
Mika headlines the Virgin Mobile Corona Theatre (2490 Notre-Dame West) on April 6 at 8 pm. Click here for tickets and more info. Click here for the official Mika website.
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Photo courtesy evenko
