It’s Gotta’ Be The Shoes

Yahoo! Music News reports the shoes were created by designer Christian Louboutin for Jackson’s comeback-that-never-was at London’s O2 Arena.

Following the King of Pop’s sudden demise, Louboutin gave the shoes to close friend Mika.

“They are amazing,” Mika said. “One is a black soft leather lace-up which goes up the ankle to support Michael while he was dancing. Then there is the pair which must have been made for him to moonwalk in. They are gold with a metal toe and the soles are really smooth and slippy to make it easy to moonwalk in. I think they are the only pair I might not wear.

“It’s a little freaky to think he’d have worn those to do the moonwalk in. Then again, who knows, it might give me some magic power to help me dance rather than just jumping around the stage like an idiot.”

So why would Louboutin just hand over such a rare commodity? Mika thinks it’s payback for saving his bacon.

“Christian is a great friend of mine, but I had to stop him from being sorted out by Robert De Niro once,” the singer explained.

“We went back to a house party after the Oscars and Christian was so drunk he stepped on Robert’s girlfriend’s dress and ripped it right the way up the back. Robert and these security guys were furious – I could see them glaring at Christian. So I grabbed Christian and said, ‘Yes, he’s an asshole,’ and threw him into a cab before they beat him up. It was insane.”

Mika’s North American fans will be able to keep an eye out for the magic shoes when the singer hits our shores for a month-long tour in support of his latest release, The Boy Who Knew Too Much, that kicks off Oct. 12 at Sound Academy in Toronto.

Too Much, released Sept. 22 worldwide, is the follow up to the Lebanese-born singer’s smash 2007 debut Life in Cartoon Motion.

Mika told U.K. newspaper the Telegraph the album is “a comic book musical biography of my adolescence.” That’s a description that’s played out in the video for the first single from the disc, “We Are Golden,” which features him dancing around his bedroom in his underwear, something he freely admits he actually did while imagining what it would like to be famous.

“As a teenager, in my songbook, I used to script what my lighting would be like,” the singer confessed. “I used to dance in my room, it was like putting myself in a trance, and making myself feel good about things, almost like a private ceremony of begging people to like you.”

Mika also told the paper he was initially puzzled by a chance encounter with a famous singer at an appearance by the Dalai Lama that his mother took him to when he was 15, but it makes perfect sense to him now.

“She thought I might find it illuminating at this impressionable age,” the singer explained. “But I was completely uninterested, except for one thing. Annie Lennox was there, sitting in the third row.

“And I went up to her and said, ‘Annie, hello, my name is Mika. I know this is a holy Buddhist thing but I really want to make it!’ She looked at me, almost upset, and then she went, ‘Listen boy, if you have to make it, you won’t have a choice. You’ll have that burning.’ Then she turned around and walked away.

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s a load of use, it’s the worst piece of advice I’ve ever heard!’ But now I get it. She was right. I don’t have a choice.”

When questioned about being a “shameless exhibitionist in his art” (which, as the Telegraph points out, places him among the current crop of “personality driven” artists like Lady Gaga, La Roux and Little Boots), Mika offered an interesting observation.

“They say shyness is a form of egotism, and you are only shy because you care too much about what people think of you. And maybe it’s true, maybe I am just an egotist. At least I’ve found a channel for it.”

You can take a look at that channel here, in the clip for Calvin Harris’ remix of “We Are Golden.”