Mika - Happy Ending

"I grew up listening to every thing from Joan Baez and Dylan, to Serge Gainsbourg and Flamenco," says Mika, a 23-year-old singer, songwriter and producer whose sparkling debut album, Life in Cartoon Motion, has just been released. "My musical tastes have become more eclectic as I've got older, but I'm always going back to great artist songwriters, people who make great records to their own vision. Prince, Harry Nillson, Elton John, even Michael Jackson. These people make amazing pop records that couldn't be performed by anybody else, and that's what I always wanted to do."

Fun, smart, musically adventurous and thematically provocative, the thirteen songs on Life, all of them written and produced by Mika, combine euphoric rushes of melody with darker unexpected elements. They range from bright daytime melodramas to night-time tales of love, loss, abandonment, hope and happiness. Each is a splendid blend of fresh imagination and deft pop craftsmanship. They are songs, Mika says, "about transitions," about people in the process of becoming whoever they want to be. Sort of like Mika himself.

"Transitions are important, because that's when everything gets destabilized, and that makes you question and re-evaluate everything," he explains. "For songwriting, that's an endless source of inspiration, because it makes you look at things. You can't take anything for granted."

A self-taught piano virtuoso, gymnastic vocalist and born entertainer, Mika has music in his bones. His four-octave voice, which he knows when to restrain and when to unleash, needs to be heard to be believed, and he uses it to powerful effect on Life. Whether praising the delights of the larger-framed woman on the funk-rocking "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)," describing the journey of a married man who discovers that he's attracted to men on the burlesque "Billy Brown," or simply celebrating the joys of being alive on "Love Today," he is unafraid to revel in the pleasure he takes in making music. "I wrote 'Love Today' when I was happy, really happy," he recalls. "When you're on a buzz, you assume that everyone in the world feels the way you do. So I put it in a song." Motorola has licensed "Love Today" for online and mobile-phone spots in its RED campaign

The moods on Life in Cartoon Motion swing wildly - as do the rush of musical surprises that continually tumble forward. That sense of delirious unpredictability accounts, in part, for the album's title. "Inevitably when you put certain subjects into a pop song, a cartoon-like quality arises," Mika says. "It's like how Homer Simpson can talk about anything from politics to Michael Jackson's weirdness to homosexuality and get away with it because it's a cartoon. That's where the title comes from."

Mika's background, however, wasn't always so playful. He was born in Beirut in the mid Eighties, and his family moved to Paris at the height of Lebanon's brutal civil war. His father was subsequently taken hostage and held at the American embassy in Kuwait, and the family eventually settled in London. Mika found himself lost in the chasm of these wrenching and frightening events.

"It was the combination of moving as well as a horrible time I had at school in the first few years of living in London that led me to forget how to read and write, and stop talking for a little while," he says. "I was pulled out of school for over six months; in order to sort myself out. This is when music really became important. It got me back on my feet."

By the time he was nine, Mika knew that songwriting was what he wanted to do. "After I started singing, I started to get jobs everywhere," he says. "I did everything from recordings with the Royal Opera House to a chewing gum jingle. One reason I got so much work was that I was insanely cheap. My mother and I had no idea what I was supposed to get paid. Looking back on it, 45 quid for an Orbit chewing gum jingle could have been a little too cheap!"

When he was eleven, Mika catapulted onto the stage of a Richard Strauss opera, and the glamour of that environment instantly seduced him. "It was a magical world that you could live in," he says. "A parallel universe for people that is illusory and enchanting." When it came time for college, he enrolled at The Royal College of Music. An obsessive songwriter, he would crash parties, hijack the piano and start performing his tunes. One such occasion led to a development deal, which, unfortunately, only ended up crushing his spirit. "The executives would try and twist me into a direction that went totally against my nature," he recalls. "Basically, they wanted me to follow whatever was popular."

To fend off depression, Mika wrote "Grace Kelly," a hilariously bold operatic spoof set to a technicolor pop backdrop. "It was a fuck-off song to the people I was working with," he explains. "That's where the line 'Shall I bend over/Shall I look older,/Just to be put on your shelf' comes from. I was so angry.

That company had every resource except a soul." The infectious pomp and catchy chorus of "Grace Kelly" became a benchmark for the kind of music he wanted to make. "You can't be afraid to stand out," he says. "If no one was going to take a punt on it, then so be it. I would do it myself." He found himself in Miami, recording demos with anyone who was interested, in any studio he could get for free. Eventually the right deal came along, and the result is this startlingly appealing album.

These songs all reflect Mika's distinctive touch - they are simultaneously theatrical and intimate, accessible and gleefully subversive. "'Why not?' is one of my mottoes," Mika says, laughing. "I always knew that the first album I ever made would have to be a completely 'No apologies' album. There's a kind of youth to that as well. This is the kind of record that I knew I would only be able to make once in my life. It's my coming-out-of school, leaving-university album - that whole transition period from childhood to adulthood. That energy keeps it alive."

And it is just the beginning of what Mika is capable of delivering musically. "Playing live is where it all comes together for me," he says. "I often get stressed when recording - it's so full of decision making. You're constantly deciding what should stay on the song forever. I love undoing all that in my live sets, and going places where I wouldn't necessarily go on the record."

Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love

A striking young woman with a strong vocal resemblance to the young Whitney Houston and pop music's largest mop of blonde corkscrew curls since Twisted Sister's Dee Snider circa "We're Not Gonna Take It," Leona Lewis won the third series of the British reality talent show The X Factor in a landslide. (For non-Brits: The X Factor is the revamped follow-up to the original U.K. talent search, Pop Idol, of which American Idol is the massively successful U.S. version; AI's Simon Cowell is the show's lead judge and executive producer.)

Born and raised in the Islington section of north London, Lewis won a talent show at the age of 13 and devoted herself to music thereafter, eventually graduating from the prestigious BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology.

While working as a receptionist and pizza waitress and writing and demoing her own material, Lewis auditioned for The X Factor in the summer of 2006 and won the third series competition in December of that year.

Lewis' debut single, a soulful cover of Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This" (Clarkson's own debut American Idol showcase single), was the number one single in the U.K. at the turn of the year, including the coveted "Christmas Number One."

Along with her TV-driven U.K. success, Leona Lewis signed an American recording deal with Clive Davis' J Records in February 2007, with plans to make her U.S. television debut on the 2007 season of American Idol.

Mandy Moore - Cry

Teen dance-pop singer Mandy Moore was born in Nashua, NH, on April 10, 1984, but raised in Orlando, FL; determined to be an entertainer from the age of six onward, she was later known throughout the Orlando area as the "National Anthem Girl" for her regular performances of "The Star Spangled Banner" at local sporting events.

Breaking into the recording industry via voiceovers and commercials, in 1999 Moore became the latest Orlando teen to sign a record contract after landing at Sony; her debut album, So Real, appeared late that year. The album spawned a hit with "Candy," a remix of which also appeared on her 2000 release I Wanna Be with You, which was basically a slightly altered version of her debut. The title cut broke into the Top 40 that year, and a self-titled proper sophomore effort appeared in summer 2001. The following year, she starred in the film version of Nicholas Sparks' popular book A Walk to Remember, playing the love interest to actor Shane West's character.

Moore made the leap to musical maturity with a 2003 covers record, Coverage, which included songs by Carole King, Joe Jackson, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. More successful film roles followed, including 2005's Saved and 2006's American Dreamz, before Moore returned to the music world in May 2007 with Wild Hope. Released via The Firm, it was the first album that Moore insisted on writing her own material, and she did so by collaborating with various musicians like Lori McKenna, Rachael Yamagata, and Chantal Kreviazuk.

Chris Daughtry - Over you

Rock n' roll is seldom a predictable affair. Just ask Chris Daughtry. Better yet, examine the very public arc the enigmatic musician carved against the grain of American Idol, electrifying the show's faithful audience with a gloves-off vocal style that revealed astonishing breadth with every new song. Still, he found himself at the center of the most surprising live rub-out in modern television history. Premature elimination, they called it on the internet, and even though a controversial lack of votes ended Chris' quest for the top rung of American Idol 5 (a spot so widely presumed to be his, even Entertainment Weekly referred to it as 'the surest thing in Idol history') it ignited a groundswell of support from fans vowing he would soon be blazing his own trail.

So much for the audition...

His new album, DAUGHTRY, on 19 Recordings/RCA Records fully delivers on that promise, but what's most striking about the North Carolina native's debut is the skillfulness with which he blends his hard won attributes: The rugged voice tempered by an even sturdier sense of place. The audacious appetite for risk reflected in his hardscrabble on-the-road writing sessions with proven rockers - some of them his own formalidols - like Brent Smith of Shinedown (Chris even covered one of their songs on Idol), Mitch Allan of SR-71, and Hinder producer Brian Howes. Emboldened by riveting collaborations such as "What I Want," "It's Not Over," "There And Back Again," and the probing "All These Lives," it's evident Daughtry possesses a durable songwriting presence of his own.

Helmed by Howard Benson (My Chemical Romance, All-American Rejects), the album thoroughly mines Daughtry's instinctive ability to deliver accessible music at every turn, veering from pop gems to tight-fisted rock anthems. Chris particularly rises to the occasion on one of the songs penned solely by him, the stunning ballad "Home." "That song means a lot to me in so many ways," he says. "It's also one that I wrote even before I did the show, though it somehow seems to capture how far I've come along." More proof of Daughtry's uncanny ability - as one LA Times critic recently put it - to 'find the story' in every song he attempts.

Daughtry has also assembled his very own band (aptly called DAUGHTRY), signaling that the charismatic vocalist is more than willing to put it all on the line. He committed to an intense audition process right from the start, determined to achieve that crucial bond between members. Daughtry summoned his keen instincts when meeting and choosing the players who would eventually become his band, tapping into both the interpersonal chemistry and musical compatibility of the guys who would eventually make the cut.

"I began my music career as a songwriter, but I've always believed in the power of a band. The great moments are when you're able to capture that extra special connection between members that you can't really define. That's what I'm striving for. We've found the right guys and I'm really excited about the prospects of what we can do. We didn't have time to feature them on the album but I can't wait to hit the road with them." For Chris, who drew consistently rave reviews on the summer-long Idol 5 jaunt, mixing it up with his own players will give his live show an even greater dimension. "There's nothing like the camaraderie of a band. That feeling that you're surrounded by a group of people who feel closer to you than just about anybody. It makes such a difference in the music."

And as for the music - poring over songs in some hotel room 'at 3:00AM with guys who only a year ago I was dreaming about meeting one day - well - it still blows my mind sometimes,' he says. The combustible process produced a hefty batch of 21 songs for Daughtry to draw from. "I never wanted to dictate a set path when we started working with the writers," he says. "They are all so different, so awesome in their own way. One of them would fly in and we'd have a go-around and something would start from that." He wrote 3 songs with Brian Howes, citing the resulting "What I Want," as the kind of 'out-of-the gate, upbeat rocker people will expect from me. I remember we liked it so much we listened to it in the car after the session. Brian is great, so full of ideas; he's like a one-man library of music." The song also piqued the interest of acclaimed rock guitarist Slash, who dropped by the studio to thread his legendary guitar work into the blistering mix.

Another song Daughtry fans should immediately relate to is the first single and blazing rocker "It's Not Over." "It's one of my favorites. I did it with Greg Wattenberg (produced Five For Fighting, and does A&R for Wind-Up Records). It's about relationships that you ultimately screw up but swear you're going to get right the second time. That feeling when you keep doing the same thing thinking you're going to get a different result, still, you keep trying." Daughtry was also eager to write with Brent Smith, frontman for Jackson, Florida band, Shinedown. "He was great to work with, not to mention that I've stolen a few moves from him on stage as well." The two are both huge Chris Cornell fans, and penned what Daughtry refers to as one of the 'heavier' songs on the album, "There And Back Again."

The range of material suits the disciplined vocalist. "I've never believed a song has to have a rock edge, or be part of one genre or anything like that to be viable. I've been writing songs since I was 16, and my goal has always been to approach the process with an open mind. Songwriters I really admire are people like Robert Plant or an Elton John, who aren't setting out to write a rock song everytime - but a great song that stands on its own no matter what. I also believe it's what you do with the song that matters, as well."

Chris recalls a moment from his Idol experience where he realized he was winning over rock fans purely on the power of his edgy interpretations. "I'll never forget I was invited to this hard rock radio station weenie roast, and I thought 'should I go, they'll probably sneer at the whole Idol experience.' I went anyway, and was thoroughly embraced by everyone there it was such a great feeling. Rob Zombie came up to me and told me he watched the show and loved what I did. Now that was really an honor."

The singer also cherished the experience of consulting with BMG U.S. Chairman Clive Davis, also known for his legendary commitment to good songwriting. Davis has even been known to choose some of the songs for the final Idol rounds. "He was a great guy. Very good at seeing the entire picture," says Chris. "I brought in my guitar and played "Home" for him. I couldn't believe it was Clive Davis sitting 2 feet from me as I sang. He said some very encouraging words to me."

Such encounters have made Chris aware of how he might be able to help struggling musicians who have yet to be discovered. "I'll never forget what it was like. To go from playing in front of 50 people to an audience of thousands. I'm always trying to hook up bands I've played with, encouraging whoever I can. It's why I work so hard to make these songs unique. I owe to those who've supported me and to those still trying to climb up that ladder."

It's that same passion, that sense of communal all-for-one-ness Daughtry so empathetically telegraphs to his fans that he poured into the making of the album. "Yes we were in crunch time, making it," says Daughtry. "But I never got the feeling I was going somewhere creatively that I didn't belong." Pure Daughtry. You get the feeling he's still 'an event unfolding' wrote one critic, about his ability to extend his reach with every performance. A sensibility he's magically been able to capture on the new record.