No Place in Heaven

Background and recording

After his first two records were described as campy affairs, Mika's third release The Origin of Love marked a drastic shift in musical style for the songwriter. No Place in Heaven continues that evolution. Mika described the recording process in an interview with Out Magazine: "I formed a little design studio with my sister and started drawing again like we used to in the kitchen of my mother's house. I was basically liberating myself and making my brain work very hard—scaring myself with challenges. As a result, the album is direct, low-down, open, candid, playful, yet a mature pop album which takes its inspiration from '60s pop music, very much the way my first album did."

Shortly after the record was officially confirmed, the songs "Talk About You" and "Last Party" were released. The latter song is an homage to late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.

Singles

"Talk About You" was released as the album's lead single. It was released to digitally retailers on 31 March and the music video premiered on 27 April 2015.

Music videos for "Last Party," "Good Guys" and "Staring at the Sun" were released on 8 April, 25 May and 31 July respectively.

Deluxe edition

On 13 November 2015 the album was re-released in the form of a double-disc deluxe edition, containing a number of bonus tracks on Disc 1 as well as a full-length orchestral bonus disc, which includes a performance by MIKA with L'Orchestre Symphonique De Montreal.

This version of the album has currently only been released in France, Canada and Italy. The French edition uses the original French track listing of the album, as well as containing five bonus tracks, including a remix of "Hurts", three new songs (including French-language track "Je Chante"), and a French version of "Staring at the Sun".

The Italian edition uses the original English track listing of the album, as well as containing six bonus tracks, including "Boum Boum Boum" (which had not previously been released in the country), the "Hurts" remix, three new songs (including Italian-language track "Centre of Gravity"), and a bonus Italian version of one of the new songs.

Commercial performance

In the United Kingdom, the album debuted at the position 19, and lasted 3 weeks on the charts with sales of 15,000, improving the sales of The Origin of Love. In Canada debuted at position 6 and stay about 5 weeks in the top 20. The album debuted at 117 in the United States. The album had a lot of success in France, which debuted at position 2, lasting 54 weeks on the charts with more than 140,000 sales, making a platinum award and Italy in which the album debuted at number 3 and lasted 53 weeks with more than 55,000 sales, making a platinum award. In the rest of Europe the album also had success, in Switzerland the album debuted at position 4 and at position 3 in Wallonia and 9 in Flandes (Belgium) the album also charted in Spain, Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Croatia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia. The album debuted at position 33 in Japan and has sold more than 10,000 as of 2016. The album debuted at position 10 in South Korea and has sold 5,000 albums with the standard version, the deluxe version, the orchestra version, the magazine edition, and the French Deluxe version which is a gold award. The album also charted in China. The album has sold approximately 350,000 sales.

Track listing

Notes:

Weekly charts

The deluxe special edition disc was made available and charted separately in Canada.