Friday Video #19: "Grace Kelly" by Mika

"Too much melody to be a hit here," says someone from a music industry message board on the chances of "Grace Kelly" by Mika becoming a hit here in America. Which is a shame considering what you do see on the US "pop" charts these days are either scowling rent-a-rapper crap where everyone is getting all uptight John Wayne (even the women), or bland, ham-fisted rock bands without humor or wit like Nickelback or Daughtry. I'm sorry but I'd like my pop to have a sense of fantasia to dote on (and I'm not talking about Fantasia from American Idol either; she's too busy keeping in goosestep with the hip-hop nazis and doting on her "hood boy" and all that). IMHO the US needs to get some melody, eccentricity, and technicolor daydreaming into its pop charts. It's a shame much of the US music-buying public hasn't heard of the Scissor Sisters or the first Rufus Wainwright album. Is it any wonder that Americans are not buying as much music as they used to; all that plain-potato-ness and greyness in the US charts right now doesn't look all that appitizing.

Mika is a London-based singer whose parents (his mother is Lebanese and his father American) was forced to leave their war-torn hometown Lebanon when he was young, and they moved to Paris and then London. His first single "Relax, Take It Easy" (which samples Cutting Crew's "(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight") created a buzz in the UK. His follow-up single, "Grace Kelly," hit #1 in the British single charts last month. His debut album Life In Cartoon Motion was released in the UK on Feburary 5, and will be released in America on March 27.

Now here's a British TV commercial for his Life In Cartoon Motion album. And I can safely assume that those pop stars that refuse to be just one color are taken far away as possible from Clear Channel.