Attitude Music Award: Mika
After staring down homophobia at the start of his pop career, Mika is now making unapologetically queer music that also processes his past pain.
By Steve Brown
Mika has been honoured with the Music Award at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards 2019, powered by Jaguar.
Go back a few years and Mika was dominating the charts with the likes of ‘Lollipop’, ‘Grace Kelly’ and ‘Big Girls (You Are Beautiful)’ and now his latest album, My Name is Michael Holbrook – which is out now – marks his first full-length record since 2015’s No Place in Heaven.
During his career, Mika has been nominated for a Grammy, MTV Europe Music Awards, Capital Radio Awards and World Music Awards, and he says music was a safe place for him to explore his sexuality.
“It makes me happy because I think the idea of sexuality being a part of your process, your identity and your source of inspiration, is so important,” he says in the Attitude Award issue, available to download and to order globally now.
“If I didn’t have music, I would not have been able to understand or deal with my sexuality in the same way. It’s always been at the centre of my writing.”
Although speculation about his sexuality was rife during the early days of his career, Mika held off coming out publicly until 2012 – something he says was motivated by a desire to be open with his own loved ones first.
“Having such a close personal and working relationship with many of my family, it took quite a while to sort all that out,” he says.
“I didn’t like the concept of the people closest to me feeling they weren’t respected or trusted enough to have a chance to react in an intimate way.
“When it did happen, my mum said: ‘So what? I’ve always known’.”
Read Mika’s full interview and more about all the winners from the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards 2019, powered by Jaguar in the Attitude Awards issue, out now.
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