Mika: 'Happy Ending'

Mika's crowd-pleasing disco stompers, which somehow manage to bridge the gap between late-morning Radio 2 and Friday night at Jumpin' Jaks, have made him one of the success stories of 2007, propelling his debut album Life in Cartoon Motion towards UK sales of nearly 800,000. And the Lebanese-born Londoner isn't done yet. After telling us how he tried to be like 'Grace Kelly', furiously encouraging us to 'Love Today' (and him in the process), and assuring every 'Big Girl' in the land that, yes, she really is beautiful, he's decided to go all earnest for a second.

'Happy Ending' is a surprisingly melancholic piano ballad with a pleasing whiff of the man-child about it. Dropping his usual fondness for tic-laden vocal showboating, Mika croons in a restrained – yes, really! - falsetto, ushering the song towards a pretty chorus sung by an ingenuous all-female choir. It just goes to show that when he gives up gurning, pops his jazz-hands in his pockets and stops trying so goddamn hard for a second, Mika can be really quite affecting.