The business of professional video production is Vichy Ratey’s business! The man has already produced young artists like Ryan Hellenbrand, Besart Morina and Ali Delic from the Rap-Hip-Hop milieu. His latest focus is on a 13-year-old Offenburg boy called Mike Singer.
When you watch any of the 15 videos currently on YouTube, you’ll immediately see the expert editing and camera work that marks these small visual masterpieces. Mike may be the singing center of these experiments, but Vichy’s photographic creativity looms through the productions! Not only that, but Vichy has written many of these entrancing tunes. Having watched all of these videos, it occurs to me that we have entered a new era of presenting sprouting singers (Singers, get it!?) to the internet world. No longer do we expect a new Bieber to be discovered, plunking a few guitar chords on an over-sized guitar and romping with his pals.
The New Era Is VISUAL INNOVATION!!
Mike is a diminutive, vulnerable-looking boy with a fascinating profile; sharp and serious in places, fun-loving and cool in others. His singing voice is not the strongest or clearest, but it handles the English lyrics and trill notes quite well. These videos are an excellent start for him, which the view count and admiring comments confirm.
In Love That Girl, the visual reminds me a bit of Falco’s Der Man mit dem Koks. Written by Ratey, this has a gentle rocking disco-pop beat, and it’s about young love resulting in teenage pregnancy.
Mike Singer: Love That Girl
http://youtu.be/bu3rqOFS-iI
“Rock ‘n Roll on the floor..Billy wants to give her more”: lyrics with clever background dance stylings. It’s about “lil girls and lil men,” a difficult subject for a song — with the resulting, somewhat comic lines: “Billy gets taken off in chains, Betty Lou gets labor pains.”
A song about difficult, uncertain love, Hold On features an older rapper named E.M.O. The combination works OK, but I find the song fairly cliché, somewhat soggy and sentimental. “Say you‘ll never leave me” is possibly the most over-used line in music.
Mike Singer feat. Ado Kojo – Mein Herz
Vichy’s video style features are the “close-up portrait” and the “contrast between light and darkness,” which you will see repeatedly.
It’s fascinating how dramatic a boy’s head and shoulders can be. For example, in slow motion: how much they reveal about sadness, sensitivity, longing and so on. The Circus does this, a kind of haunting back-to-childhood tune, though with lyrics I can‘t much understand.
MIKE SINGER ” Jar Of Hearts ” Christina Perri Cover
A much different style is visible in the trance-like melody Goodbye in which Mike glides robotically through fences, and we are bombarded with images. This song has originality and appeal that works. It’s this type of song that touches on something special, something yet to be created!
“So many times I loved you
You only answered with a sigh –
So how long have you been planning
The long goodbye!?”
This tune moves between sentimental ballad and techno beat as Mike plays a small keyboard and is served various props: caps, glasses, a toy, a guitar. A shadowed dancing youth adds motion to the black and white scenery, and both subjects break into a brief synchronized slow-mo at the 3:05 mark that is schick! Good to see young Singer enjoying the beats and visual fun in this brilliant video. A Big “like” for this!
Mike covers Bieber’s Beauty and a Beat quite nicely, although he can‘t quite carry the dynamic behind this, and visually there should be a second person to focus on here.
In Wanna Wanna featuring PzYchedelic, Ratey presents a whole happy array of young faces, interesting and fun, but it’s a troublesome theme to me: young infatuation and sexuality. “I wanna put it to you” is about wanting a girl and hints at more than just holding hands.
Mike‘s Emeli Sande cover of Read All About It shows him singing the paper’s lyrics, which is not exciting to me.
His song Promises reveals faults with his English which blurs some lyrics here. This very appealing song creates another problem I sometimes see lately: kids singing “adult experience” songs. After an emotional first minute, Promises moves into a Hip-Hop mode, Mike dressed appropriately. The visual toggles between realistic Bahnhoff shots and fantasy backgrounds.
A cover I like is Christina Perri’s Jar of Hearts — given a new perspective with a young boy singing this tale of being used. I love the contrasting bright spots around Mike framed by darkness – more visual genius by Ratey!
Boy Gone Wild is a snazzy Techno-Hip-Hop-Dance creation, again produced brilliantly! But it is possibly not the style which best suits Mike Singer, who appears just a touch too young and constrained to wear this outfit. Still, it’s a super beat and visually very attractive.
There are covers of Chris Brown and Bruno Mars, which Mike does well, and Mike’s video on a recent train ride to Berlin.
What’s important to me here is the danger of concentrating too much on producing flashy videos and rapidly snapping up lyrics instead of focusing on the music. Mike‘s voice could project more. The English flaws are not significant, but the lyrics come across with little accentuation in some places.
The bright side is that I see a young boy learning rapidly, having a privileged time creating new and exciting material. There seems to be a mutual stream of creativity flowing in the right direction between Mike and Vichy, which is insightful and fun to watch.
Mike’s popularity is rising quickly, so I’m certain his success is guaranteed with Vichy‘s fine production, at least online for the moment.
Anyway, I’m along for the ride!
For more information about Mike Singer follow him on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Watch Mike Singer and jump on the bandwagon !
rjmendera for theskykid.com
Well said. “The magic of the internet” Thanks for updating the links. New Fav, MIKE SINGER ”Jar Of Hearts” Christina Perri Cover.
Wow, I didn’t know Mike was doing videos before the Voice Kids Germany. So sad to see all the links are dead / deleted. He probably wants to get rid of that image. At least one of my favs is still alive.
https://youtu.be/-iRyVP-Vlac
Its only too often that as singers grow up they delate some of their older performanes – of course thanks to the nature of the Internet nothing dissapears . Its sad they have to do it – but I guess they are under some kind of contractual obligation.
I Love you and you are so cute in so many ways we have so much in common and I love when you sing boyfriend have fun you are hot and I love you and I think you should keep going forward in your singing wove you. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-! :-! :-! :-! :-! :-! :-!
Very well documented and informative article for Mike Singer! I’m happy I took a back seat to this one, and more than happy to provide the link on my site to this article.
Once again RJ authored an honest and straight forward article with both positive recommendation and healthy criticism.
I’m sure that I will be following Mike’s career very closely. Mike has amazing vocal talent. Coupling that with the visionary talent of Vichy Ratey creates a winning combination that will undoubtedly yield continued success.
Keep the music and amazing videos coming Mike!
thanks for visiting Rivenmaster–sources have just revealed to me that MIKE will be appearing on german TV SAT1 soon in a casting type show for young talent. His fans will have the chance to support him LIVE there.Watch for more info soon on twitter via @rjmendera or @sat1 and his fan sites.–AHOY
Hallo Leute ;-)
my English isn´t quite good enough to write in it here. Anyway, I hope you will understand. Thank you so much for your kind words and also thank you for your honest criticism. With this we can get better and better.
Much love
yours Mike Singer
hey MIKE thanks for your post–first of all my COMPLIMENTS on your english,there are really very few places where its hard to understand your english when you sing–in comparison to,for example,abraham mateo,your english is much more on.The only reason i point these things out is because,later,when you bring your album out,people will listen carefully to every word.The videos are inspiring-keep practising and improving and i am sure you will go far.I notice there are already lots of reactions and promotions,so just keep it going.rjm-big hug my friend!!
I believe it is important to notify ALL FANS OF MIKE SINGER that for over 6 months his sites on twitter and facebook have been run by a GHOSTWRITER and his brother.sooo–we have NOT been chatting or talking with Mike at all.Its not uncommon for prominent talent sites to be run by other people,but in this case the deception went too far!! The reason given is that the real Mike could not manage his social media,school,tv show,etc without help.
Only a few days ago i received an email from this person claiming the two had parted ways after a dispute.Mikes new site is apparently authentic,but he has hardly used it.@MikeSinger1
I am sorry for all of you who have been betrayed by this deception.I am hoping the REAL MIKE SINGER will come out and explain his approval of this charade,but possibly HIS ENGLISH is not polished enough to do that. If an explanation is posted i will relay it here-best greetz-rjmendera dortmund
update on the GHOSTWRITER AFFAIR–i have just received a private message from MIKE admitting that he was using a ghostwriter to help manage his sites–however MIKE says he was also partially writing his own messages and monitoring the things the ghostwriter was posting.I guess this is acceptable considering his involvement in the VOICE KIDS Competition.In any case he has his sites back under control and you can follow the real mike singer again.best-rjm-dortmund (p.s. because he has less time,his activities online may well be fewer than before)
I can’t wait for album of MIKE SINGER!
Concretise our support!
I have first heard of Mike Singer when RJ sent me a link to his Love That Girl clip on YouTube. Liked the upbeat rhythm and when checked the rest of his songs was pleasantly surprised seeing the variety of styles in which he performs. Having original songs as well as cover is another plus.
I must admit that I rarely pay attention to the lyrics of the songs – that has to do with English not being my first language probably , and the article of Rj was an eye-opener for me.
The slightly accented English of Mike I find quite cool. And anyway that`s nothing to be concerned about judging from my own experiences ( and accented English of my own ).
I hope that many people will discover Mike and his music thanks to this article and am glad that RJ wrote it so well.
Thanks SkyKid im hoping you get your radio back up soon so we can hop in there and hear Mike and many others perform again.Sometimes it seems you can read my mind because you always seem to know at the right time which artists interest me.Of course accents also carry their own charm-my Mother had a broad one but yours is absolutely DELICIOUS–haar—AHOY