Beth Johnson from Entertainment Weekly wrote that the song is "a Bee Gees-ish shout-out to Frankie Goes to Hollywood." Craig McLean from The Guardian somewhat echoed Griffith review, writing that the song "become the best song the Bee Gees never wrote." Christian John Mikane from PopMatters wrote that "the song is among the better songs on the album." He described the music as "gloriously synthetic, but the confidence in Mika's voice more than compensates for the artificiality of the music." The song received positive reviews from music critics. The song is an upbeat pop track with a disco-like bassline and a funky guitar riff in the background on the choruses, where he sings: "It's as if I'm scared/It's as if I'm terrified/It's as if I scared/It's as if I'm playing with fire". It uses the melody from " (I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight" by the Cutting Crew. Once home, he wrote the song in twenty minutes. He walked home and, still frightened, started singing. Outside there were police all around: it was 7 July 2005 London bombings. As lights came on again, passengers were told to leave the train. The lights went out, reminding him of his childhood fears. Many years later, he was aboard a Tube train travelling to a recording studio when the train suddenly stopped.
RELAX TAKE IT EASY TV
In a 2017 episode of his show Stasera Casa Mika on the Italian TV channel Rai 2, Mika described that as a child he was scared of the London Underground, before becoming used to the noise and crowds as he grew up. So it was one of the harder tracks for me to produce, but also the most rewarding." The organic-ness gives a more classic field to it.
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It's really effective – you can't tell if it's a full dance track or really laid-back. And we picked up the strangest pedal combinations to get all these weird sounds. We used some great session musicians who had worked with Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson. So when I came into producing 'Relax' I made sure that most of the sounds we used were actually made by real instruments. "I always wanted to write a dance song that wasn't a really full dance track, that felt organic. This is a really thoughtful, in-depth analysis of the track.Mika described the story behind the song in an interview with the Sun Newspaper, on 2 February 2007: Mika seems to have his tongue permamently in his cheek. All in all, it's a song with very well-written lyrics, almost poetic, cleverly hidden in a dance track. The last verse is a contrast to the others with its more positive tone: it admits that the situation is bad but it appeals to solidarity and asks you to move on. Using the term "it's as if.", phrasing the last line of the chorus, "Are we playing with fire?", as a question and the line "It's clear we don't understand." brings across a feeling of uncertainty very well. The line "playing with fire" seems slightly out of place: it refers to taking risks perhaps out of your league rather than dealing with bleak circumstances as the rest of the song does. The juxtaposition of a cheerful tune with lyrics about being scared and terrified is ironic. The chorus touches upon blame and helplessness the latter is often all that you can do when you experience the former. The next line aptly appeals to the universality of death and pain. The imagery in the first few lines, of being on a broken train at the end of the line with no one you know, is powerfully bleak, empty and sad. I always took the song on its dancey surface level but re-reading the lyrics now it strikes me how deep t is. It could be a love affair in that setting? It was written in the aftermath of the bombings that took place in London July 7th 2005.Mika had nothing to do since the tube network was brought to a standstill, so he sat down and wrote about it. I thought the same thing when I heard Relax, take it easy.
"It's clear, we don't understand but the last thing on my mind is to leave youįor some reason attributing this song to a single event makes it finite, whereas I feel that it suggests something that goes much deeper: Mika are you keeping something from us? Is there something else behind this song in addition to your response to July 7th.? I know Mika has been reported to have said that this was in response to the July 7th bombings in London- but for some reason this song struck me as being more about a personal experience: My questions are: Blame what on me or you? When I first heard "Relax, take it easy" I thought- wow this is really deep: Something happened that was controversial, life changing and full of meaning.Īre you scared? Are we playing with fire?"
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