Songfacts®:

• This was the first single and title track from London-based pop singer songwriter Mika's second album.
• Mika told Q magazine June 2009 in a pre-release interview: "It's big sounding and aggressive, but in a good way. It's got a gospel choir on it and a kids' choir, but unlike the first record they're not singing sweetly, they're screaming at the top of their lungs."
• This features the Andrae Crouch Gospel Choir who sung on Madonna's "Like a Prayer." Mika told The Observer Music Monthly June 2009 that the choir, "refused to sing the line 'don't give it up when you're young and you want some.' One of them stopped and turned to me and very slowly said: 'You want what? A cheeseburger?'" Obviously that was not what Mika meant. He then explained that the song's theme was inspired by Angela Carter's 1967 novel The Magic Toyshop, which follows its heroine's burgeoning sexuality as she lives with her tyrannical toy maker uncle - "and I've been fascinated by that period in someone's life."
• Fox's broadcast of the 2009 Teen Choice Awards used this as its theme song throughout the show.
• Mika explained the song to The Daily Mail September 4, 2009: "I lost myself in a teenage world. It's about trying to convince yourself that that you're special."
• Mika told The Sun September 11, 2009 that this, "is a song about dealing with the horrible things in life. He explained: "I was bullied at school and so writing that, I was thinking how things were as a teenager. I worried about surviving into my 20s. That song is dark but it's also saying, 'I'm going to survive and I will make myself feel like I'm not a piece of s--t."
• The song's music video is a kitschy celebration of youth during which Mika dances around his teenage bedroom in his underpants. He told BBC News: "The video is joyful but there's this desperation in there. It's like a ceremony where this boy in his bedroom is begging the world to love him."
• The album was originally titled after this song, however Mika revealed to Jo Whiley on her BBC Radio 1 show that he was considering renaming the set, because he wanted "something a little more ridiculous." On 6 August 2009 it was confirmed that the album's title would change to The Boy Who Knew Too Much.
• Mika told The Observer Music Monthly June 2009 that Life in Cartoon Motion, "contained a lot of childhood references." He added that The Boy Who Knew Too Much, "is evidently, I think, more adolescent. I wanted to take it to the next place. I thought, 'Where do I want to go back to? Before all this happened, what made me start writing songs? What did I want to capture the first time round that I didn't manage?' Well, I liked that feeling of being 17, 18 years old. I wanted to return to that period. A lot of characters from my first album have grown up and I think the new album contains a lot of contradictions."