Mika

If you thought Mika might do something shockingly different with his second album, you've got the wrong Boy. Originality is not Mika's objective -- and that is not intended as an insult. Rather, his aesthetic philosophy -- even more developed here -- is about putting his own brilliantly colored stamp on delicious, candy-coated quotations of other artists/styles that fly by at breakneck speeds. Life in cartoon motion, in other words. The primary difference here is that the palette of his pastiche has expanded to include shades of ABBA, Paul Simon and gothic fairy tales ("Toy Boy").