{"id":2247203,"date":"2026-01-23T16:02:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T16:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2247203"},"modified":"2026-01-23T16:02:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T16:02:24","slug":"mika-enters-a-new-music-era-with-hyperlove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/mika-enters-a-new-music-era-with-hyperlove\/","title":{"rendered":"Mika enters a new music era with ‘Hyperlove’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Shortly after seeing the musical Wicked<\/em> for the first time on the invitation of Stephen Schwartz, piano pop diva Mika went out to dinner with the legendary composer. Schwartz caught him daydreaming and asked what he was thinking about, Mika says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018No, I really liked your show.\u2019 I was like, \u2018But there\u2019s this thing, the best melody in the show, for me, is sung by the wrong person. Why did you give it to the nasty one? You should have given it to the loser. The loser should be singing that song.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n

That idea became \u201cPopular Song,\u201d Mika\u2019s 2012 duet with a young actress just beginning to dip her toe into the music world, Ariana Grande<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just have to sit in a session with her and work with her for even just a day or two, and you would find it completely logical,\u201d he says of Grande and her vertiginous rise to stardom, which includes an Oscar nomination for playing Glinda<\/a> in the first Wicked<\/em> film, where she sings \u201cPopular.\u201d <\/p>\n

The concept of popular \u2014 and who gets to be heard \u2014 resonates with the gay artist. Despite topping the U.K. singles chart with his 2007 single \u201cGrace Kelly,\u201d many in the music industry initially doubted Mika, saying his \u201cbrazen\u201d style was \u201ctoo gay\u201d for the radio. Ignoring the criticism and defying expectations, Mika has never toned himself down and has stayed true to himself across six studio albums, four live albums, and over 20 million records sold.<\/p>\n

Sacha Cohen<\/small><\/p>\n

Now, that undying love for an underdog fighting against the odds is overflowing out of his new album, Hyperlove<\/em>, the Lebanese-born musician\u2019s first English-language album since 2019. The album is a response to the \u201chyper living, burning through everything, leaving nothing\u201d that so many are doing in modern times.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet, as destructive as it is powerful, we must every once in a while ask ourselves a fundamentally simple question: What is love and do we truly think it exists?\u201d Mika says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe album is a question and a howl \u2014 or a scream \u2014 to feel contact, feel intimacy, to feel more connected,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt is not a solution. It is a screaming desire.\u201d<\/p>\n

That desire for connection comes through clearly on songs like \u201cScience Fiction Lover\u201d and \u201cTake Your Problems With You.\u201d He cites the Charlie Chaplin film that shares a name with his song \u201cModern Times\u201d and its message of \u201cthe human being just becoming a cog and losing their place emotionally\u201d as inspiration.<\/p>\n

To counter an overwhelming world, Mika is focusing on remembering \u201cthat the small is important, and that out of the small come these enormous possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s readdressing that sense of scale \u2026 in order to identify the most minute \u2026 unimportant, invisible emotion that can change your life and change the way you interact with the world and the way you live within it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

One of those seemingly small but vital things in Mika\u2019s life is his beloved golden retriever, who inspired the album\u2019s final track, \u201cImmortal Love.\u201d When the song idea came to him, it was a \u201crevelation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy am I overcomplicating this? Look at this dog. Look at this dog. It\u2019s just energy,\u201d he remembers thinking.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also centering his life around community. And his concerts, which he calls \u201calternative, crazy people church,\u201d are a perfect example of this shift. \u201cIn the most joyful, irreverent, loving, community feeling-based thing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like a mixture of a rave and a crying club. And it has always been like that, but actually it\u2019s gotten more and more like that over the past few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

This vibe is \u201cmostly created by the people that show up,\u201d he continues. \u201cAnd the fact that it\u2019s selling out all over the world, and it\u2019s almost sold out in most places, it\u2019s just this amazing, amazing feeling. Because it always takes me back when I see that it\u2019s actually working. I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s cool. OK, good. The crazies are still there. Let\u2019s go see our family.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Mika says that if people are going to survive these modern times, they must reconsider the importance of community. \u201cI think we undervalue what community is. And I think even within the queer, LGBTQIA+ community, we say community, but we don\u2019t have enough places that just represent community that we can just be at or within,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Mika says he only got to where he is \u201cthanks to the support that I got from people who allowed me to be myself and not be ashamed of myself.\u201d Now, he wants to be that person for others.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m also here thanks to music. And the community that made me feel that there was light even in the most difficult moments of my life,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think that we need to encourage that. We need to help create that feeling for someone who might need it. And I think that\u2019s going to be my next project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mika\u2019s Hyperlove<\/em> is out January 23. Learn more about his album and tour on yomika.com<\/em><\/p>\n

This article is part of OUT\u2019s Jan-Feb 2026 print issue, which hits newsstands January 27. <\/em><\/strong>Support queer media and subscribe<\/em><\/strong><\/u><\/a> \u2014 or download the issue through Apple News+, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.out.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly after seeing the musical Wicked for the first time on the invitation of Stephen Schwartz, piano pop diva Mika went out to dinner with the legendary composer. Schwartz caught him daydreaming and asked what he was thinking about, Mika says. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018No, I really liked your show.\u2019 I was like, \u2018But there\u2019s this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2247204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[24076,425092,368120,420501,418511,435070],"class_list":["post-2247203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-ariana-grande","tag-gay-musicians","tag-glinda","tag-mika","tag-musical-wicked","tag-queer-artist"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mika-enters-a-new-music-era-with-Hyperlove.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2247203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2247203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2247203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2247205,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2247203\/revisions\/2247205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2247204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2247203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2247203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2247203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}