GenQ - For the not so straight individual

I have to confess, at first one of the only reasons I checked out the album "Life In Cartoon Motion" by MIKA (released on February 14, 2007 by Casablanca) because of its bright and eye-catching album cover. I'm a sucker for a creative cover and have fallen prey to many bad impulse buys while wandering through Borders. This luckily wasn't one of those mistakes.

This album is, in short, unique. There seems to be a lot of interesting music coming out of the UK recently, and 22 year old MIKA is no exception. The music on "Life in Cartoon Motion" is a very interesting hybrid of a lot of familiar sounds working on a lot of familiar themes. For instance, "Lollipop" has a distinctly Jackson 5 background feel to it, which invariably means a fun song:

I went walking with my mama one day,
When she warned me what people say,
Live your life until love is found,
Or love's gonna get you down

Singing,
Suckin' too hard on ya lollipop,
Oh love's gonna get you down.

In something akin to a homage to Queen, MIKA's "Big Girl [You Are Beautiful]" seems to almost reinvent "Fat Bottomed Girls" in a very fun way:

Walks into the room,
Feels like a big balloon,
I said, 'Hey girls, you are beautiful!'
Diet Coke and a pizza please,
Diet Coke and I'm on my knees
Screaming 'Big girl, you are beautiful!'

"Life in Cartoon Motion" might not be for everyone. In fact, people seem to either love it or hate it. As for me, I feel fairly middling on it. The album has some undeniably fun music, but some of it is definitely skippable. If you like the Scissor Sisters at all, you will probably enjoy a lot of MIKA's sound on this album.