As far as Oedipal odes to obsessively consuming every shred of a new lover’s individual identity go, Mika’s song “Touches You” from his new album “The Boy Who Knew Too Much” is actually pretty charming. It's a rollicking, vampy piano-pop burner with a seriously creepy chorus:  “I want to be your sister, and your mother too / I want to be whatever else that touches you.”

Nick Cave could be jealous of a lyric like that. But for the young singer-songwriter, it’s a prime example of the power of pop music to make uncomfortable truths go down easily.

“Pop enables you to hoodwink people,” Mika said. “If you follow certain formulas and structures, people gravitate to a song and attach themselves to it, they instantly ‘get’ it. And once you’ve got them, you can get them to sing along to something bitterly sad.”