Mika

Produced by Mika and Greg Wells (Katy Perry, P!nk), this record is the highly anticipated follow-up to 2007's LIFE IN CARTOON MOTION, which sold over 5 million copies worldwide. The new album features guest contributions by Imogen Heap and Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett, and contains brilliant first single of the same name, "We Are Golden".

Life has moved in accelerated motion for Mika, a Beirutborn, London-bred songwriter, since releasing his debut album in 2007. Claiming the space between Freddie Mercury, Elton John, David Bowie and ABBA, Mika's infectious songs – pop anthems such as "Grace Kelly," "Love Today," and "Relax" – rocketed the singer to international acclaim within months of his album's release. Critical praise landed squarely on his shoulders across the globe for his keenly-honed choruses and unmistakable three-octave range, unlike any other voice in pop music. Award nominations followed throughout 2007 and 2008, garnering Mika Grammy's, Brit Awards, World Music Awards, and the UK's most prestigious songwriting honor, The Ivor Novello Award. Fashion designers such as Matthew Williamson and Christian Louboutin designed bright, dazzling stage attire for him to match his own color-soaked, exuberant live show. When the dust finally settled – closing a world tour in Paris, France, where he played to an arena packed with 65,000 people – Mika began to set his sights on his next record.

Following the age-old motto "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," Mika returned to Los Angeles, where he made his first record, and loaded his recording studio with visual inspiration, toys, posters, 60's children's books, trinkets and more to create a world entirely of his own where the songs could grow. The resulting album, a firecracker explosion of effervescent, gorgeous piano pop, shows Mika building upon the strengths of his debut (every chorus is instantly memorable) while expanding arrangements and styles to create a record that is even more joyous and unique than his first.

THE BOY WHO KNEW TOO MUCH straddles a line between childish naïvete and world-worn sophistication; Mika likens this transformation as the shift from childhood and LIFE IN CARTOON MOTION's innocence to something more akin to adolescence. As such, the songs on THE BOY WHO KNEW TOO MUCH are ebulliently bold, embracing the mysteries, melodramas, adrenaline and vitality of one's teenage years to startling affect. The arrangements are bigger and more beautiful than ever before, and the album is underpinned by an open-hearted and accepting idea of what living in the 21st century means in all its contradictory, complicated glory.

Title track "We Are Golden" opens the album with a chorus that could only be described as "absolutely amazing," featuring a massive choir, defiant declarations and a driving beat.. "Blame It On the Girls" marries skittering percussion with floor-stomping piano and a swoon-worthy chorus, while "Rain" – featuring droplets of violin plucks from Owen Pallett and additional programming by Stuart Price – is a bona fide dancefloor anthem, Mika's stunning voice floating effortlessly over pillows of synths. "Toy Boy" features sweeping, 40's Disney orchestration, and "Dr. John" mixes a 60's sunlit, hand-clapped chorus with a plea for clarity from confusion. Indeed, from stirring ballads to candy-coated choruses, THE BOY WHO KNEW TOO MUCH retains a breadth of vision that speaks not only to Mika's extraordinary melodic sensibilities, but also to the incredible stories he tells within his songs. From Mika, we would expect nothing less.

Pop magpie Mika's bright, kaleidoscopic music has drawn comparisons to everyone from Queen and Elton John to the Scissor Sisters and Rufus Wainwright. Born Michael Holbrook Penniman in Beirut to a Lebanese mother and American father, Mika and his parents moved to Paris while he was still a very young child, and eventually London by the time he was nine years old. The frequent moves, incidents like his father being taken hostage at Kuwait's American Embassy, and bullying at school affected young Mika to the point where he stopped talking and was taken out of school for six months. At this point, music became Mika's lifeline, and he soon began formal musical training, which included voice lessons. Along with studies at the Royal College of Music, in his teens and early twenties Mika also recorded with the Royal Opera House and created a jingle for Orbit chewing gum. He dropped out of school to concentrate on his take on pop music, inspired by freewheeling songwriters like Prince and Harry Nilsson. His debut single, Relax, Take It Easy, appeared in fall 2006, but it was its follow-up, Grace Kelly, that broke Mika in the U.K. Released in January 2007, the song hit number one on the singles chart thanks to heavy downloading, following in the footsteps of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." Mika's full-length debut, Life in Cartoon Motion, did just as well when it was released that February, and was topping the U.K. charts around the time it was released in the U.S. that March. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide