Love me love me

[webofevil]

Universal’s decision to throw everything behind touting tousle-haired validation-Gollum Mika as this year’s Great White Hope for pop looks ever more mystifying. After the limp, half-arsed “Love Today”, the new forgettable single, “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)”*, reassures larger ladies that Mika is unjudgmental about their shape, with the unspoken corollary that he expects them to reciprocate gratefully by loving him more than any human being has ever loved. The lyric “Love, love me... love, love me” was a double bluff; it appears cheeky but is in fact deadly serious. If (a) you don’t have much of a personality but (b) you’re given to obsessing over your personality, it therefore can’t take you too long to realise (a), and his rigid, studied attempts at looking gleeful and carefree in his videos and his earnest yet unconvincing pouting in publicity shots appear to constitute a desperate rearguard action against just such a deficiency. He’s looking for affirmation on a huge scale that he may well never achieve—certainly not with will-this-do songs like these—and that’s quite uncomfortable to watch.

flaneurette has suggested that “Big Girls” is just the first in a series of Mika songs aimed at different sections of the population that might feel in any way subjugated, picked on or even faintly disaffected, in an effort to win their approval in return:

# Elderly men, I respect you /
You probably fought in the war /
You enjoy rich tea biscuits /
And you drive very slowly /
Love me, love me #

and

# People in prison, you’re lovely /
If you say you didn't do it, that’s good enough for me /
Love me love me love me #

I strongly suspect she’s right, and that at this rate we can expect Mika to be releasing, say, “Cornwall for the Cornish (Love Me Love Me Love Me)” by this time next year.

Who else do we reckon is Mika writing songs about?

* To be fair, it’s not entirely forgettable, but only because of a startling, possibly even malicious edit in the video—a low-budget effort shot without artificial lighting on the streets of Croydon showing Mika dancing with eponymous “Big Girls”—where, just after he has been extolling the virtues of “curves in all the right places”, we cut suddenly and jarringly to a girl who is no older than eight.

Comments

[lifesizemonkey.livejournal.com]

Nazis.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

He should redress the balance: Bulimics.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

#A&R men, your cheque book is lovely/
Am I doing this right?/
Love me love me love me#

[chiller.livejournal.com]

He reminds me of one of those desperately precocious / annoying kids you run into (or used to), who have been told that they sing well and who therefore insist on singing to everyone because they absolutely expect that the reaction will always be adoring admiration. I always want to say to him, Mika, dude, sit down and have some tea. Nobody's going to love you unless you talk to them. This sounds desperate!

But he doesn't listen.

[dermfitz.livejournal.com]

Nice to see the standard use of the hash symbol for song lyrics; my job is clearly deep within the national consciousness after all.

# Kiddy fiddlers, you hang around the slide
Hoping no-one will see
But I think you're just misunderstood
Love me, love me, love me. #

[(Anonymous)]

As a larger lady, I am now feeling completely vindicated

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Then Mika's work here is almost done. All Mika needs from you now is LIMITLESS AFFIRMATION. It's kind of like being a bride of Christ, only more demanding.

[(Anonymous)]

In the circumstances, I think it's the least I can do. But can I be a Vestal Virgin rather than a Bride of Christ?

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Christ might be miffed.

[(Anonymous)]

blimey - that's quite a dilemma