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| Mariah telling us "no." |
i dont know how 2 properly describe my love for mariah carey & have struggled for years. folks, when i listen 2 her sing, i am suspended in the spacetimecontinuum...an astronaut peacefully separated from the spacecraft, floatin away in the impossibility of octave jumps & whistled trills, high on hearing. every note is a feeling 2 roll around in, in utero once again or strangled by what clda been. when u follow a diva, too, u feel electrified by the highs & lows of her career. every moment operates at the precipice of comeback or defeat. mariah's music has always had a bit of triumph embedded w/in which is maybe the easiest way 2 obtain me as eternal fan--underdog narrative.
the story goes as follows: when mariah carey the album was released in 1990, the teenaged mariah was touted as both a new standard in the industry and a girl of questionable ability hiding behind the safety of studio recordings. backed by a 1.5 million recording budget for the s/t, carey was championed by SONY head tommy motolla who assured the then-18-year-old he'd make her the next madonna or MJ. for carey, whose childhood had been rough but filled w/ desire for this exact kind of success, this was too good 2 b true. the world found this same kind of impossibility in carey's five-octave voice (especially when coupled w/ inexhaustible songwriting talents that have kept mariah in the billboard 100) & critics didn't believe that she was more than a studio artist. after her second album dropped, mariah booked an appearance on mtv unplugged to assuage the haters. until then, carey had insisted that the stress of touring would strain her voice, making only small appearances at award shows. carey's unplugged episode led to a #1 single and became the most replayed unplugged episode on mtv for good reason--she had the pipes.
in the background, carey wed to motolla (twenty years her senior) whose emotional abuse would come to light years later. fans have pieced together clues from more personal tracks--especially those on butterfly, carey's sixth album & the one she's deemed her magnum opus. butterfly's strong venture into r&b, which motolla had kept carey from pursuing in the past, continues threads from daydream and pushes carey further into a genre-bending hybridization which revolutionized pop charts and provided her with the underpinnings of her biggest comeback--still to come. one could say without this reinvention, carey would have been left in the 90s.
flash forward to 2001 and carey's soundtrack for her film glitter has released on 9/11, completely eclipsed by the tragedy of the day. glitter's throwback flourishes were genius but ahead of their time & rumors of revenge by motolla, the general political/emotional climate, and carey's own mental health struggles, coupled with a movie that's basically a star is born set in 1983 (though isn't that terrible), resulted in a record that would drag carey's career down to its lowest depths. i used to say "if mariah can get through glitter, we can make it through anything."
my extremely correct opinion is that glitter is full of fantastic vocal performances from mariah and a real treat for fans who wanted to hear mariah experiment a little, especially in the styles she grew up listening to/singing. i think "didn't mean to turn you on" slaps & "lead the way" makes me cry--the ending man!! i love mariah's lifelong friendship w/ da brat & i think they've always had great chemistry, so the loverboy remix is one of my all-time bops. it's crazy when you listen to "if we" & know about the rumors that motolla manufactured jlo's "i'm real" to co-opt its initial backing sample. heinous!!! if you watch the infamous video of mariah showing up to TRL on the brink of breakdown, she walks onstage right after carson daily finishes airing "i'm real" w/ a "loverboy" tshirt & cart full of ice cream. a few minutes in she says "all i want is one day off." in 2018, carey would explain that during this period she was diagnosed with bipolar 2. her hospitalization immediately following the TRL incident further tarnished her reputation as a "viable" pop star
carey's next album is one of my favorites, though many seem to hold it in even worse regards than glitter. charmbracelet was released in 2002 to little fanfare & it's lead single "through the rain" a ballad about perserverence had very little chart presence. i found charmbracelet during a time where i just wanted music 2 lull (suffocate?) me in2 some other sphere. i used 2 listen to "my saving grace" as loud as i could while lying on the carpeted floor of the otherwise unstaffed office building i worked at, interrupted only by the ding of a UPS guy opening the front door. "giving me strength when i / almost lost it all / catching my every fall" charmbracelets r like nostalgia arsenals & this one is filled w/ the usual heartbreak, coping, redemption, diss tracks that mariah is known for--lush, luxurious even in its pain & always in its pleasure. charmbracelet feels a little too safe at times, the act of someone really needing to have an album that erases the wild desires of glitter. but it's not a bad album--not at all. (it's worth mentioning, too, that the 00s occurred during mariah's 30s perhaps one of the trickiest transitional periods for female singers who have been "sexy" at any point--further complicating all matters.)
where does this lead us? mariah of course returns to the billboard charts with a string of hits in the mid-00s, including 2005's "we belong together" which spent 14 weeks at number one. she gets married, has kids, eventually faces a high profile divorce. later in the decade, people begin to criticize her voice. after years of overperforming--what carey had originally been afraid of--she gives some bad performances, mostly after insane back-to-back scheduling or while singing outside in east coast December weather, wearing the sexy outfits she can't seem to shirk. justice for mariah carey might be that she gets to perform in her sweats after 30 years of hot but uncomfortable stage wear. but she is a diva, she will wear a gown until she dies.
when i listen 2 a mariah track, it somehow feels underpinned by all i have written here. what does it mean that this voice can still hit the high notes, has a record of what it's done before that can't be erased in spite of all of the nitpicking & vitriol from critics? when you love a diva, u live to see her redeemed. u wonder if each new single will have the potential to work against time--to chart in spite of the way that pop charts thirst for youth while mining the trends & sounds of the past.
seeing mariah in vegas had been a dream for a few years, not only because vegas seemed like the only reasonable place for me to allow this completely inane obsession to flourish but because i'd never gotten the chance to see mariah live. we sat in our seats 30 rows back, which each cost more than i make in a day and a half of work, & waited breathlessly for mariah to arrive. she was an hour late after a mild dress snafu. a tailor had been attempting to rehem it. everything that went wrong was a crime done to mariah by cesar's palace, including the too ornate crystal-studded glass of water ("they can't just get me a regular glass") and the too hot tea ("cesar's palace is trying to burn me"). our diva had arrived. we blame cesar for everything!!!
where do i start? after that extremely gay remix of "butterfly" that appears at the end of butterfly, mariah walked out singing "emotions," an opener that refuses the haters a single moment of vindication. "emotions" ends with an unfurling crescendo of whistle register, a sound finally--after all the anticipatory description--given to the titular emotion. mariah seemed to hit these notes effortlessly, though from far away it was difficult to tell if anything was being lipsynced. at this point in the concert, an usher came to tell us that standing was not allowed in our section of the theater. we boldly headed to the first section of seats to scope out a place we could properly enjoy ourselves.
what came next? my brain is addled, but the one-two punch of "can't let go" & "make it happen" arrived soon after & i absolutely lost it. mariah teased "underneath the stars" saying "the lambs might know this one" & me & all the gay men in the front row shrieked until hoarse. at every mariah show, a given--a gay man in the front row, a dyke in the 15th. at some point an usher approached us to ask to see our tickets, & i told him that i needed to be somewhere we could dance. i had traveled all the way from kansas. channeling my inner mariah paid off & we were allowed 2 remain in the illicit $200+ seat section. god blessed the lambily that night, my dear readers.
the only track mariah pulled out from caution, her newest, was "a no no," which is the inevitable result of having so many #1 hits you can't even perform them all in concert. we love watching mariah wag her finger at us! tell us no one more time!!! the list of things we say no to has already turned into a scroll--the authority of the ushers, those who don't know all the words, Las Vegas (in general), $140 tickets, men who glare at their wives having fun, the lack of time for more outfit changes, mariah not singing "the roof" even though we need it. a duet with her keyboardist of "#beautiful" caused me to literally die & a paramedic in the form of mariah's angelic whistling intertwined w/ the savory vox of the piano man revived me at the track's end. i was glad to be back alive in time to witness a medley of songs--crybaby, honey, i'm that chick, say something, breakdown. i am certainly missing something. heartbreaker? we were given lines or melodies--30 second snippets. cean & i had an absolute meltdown when she did not finish "crybaby" to the end--one of the best cacophonies of sound i've ever lived inside--yet we understood. she can only sing so much--a voice, a person. when we force mariah carey to sing, we tap into a natural resource which is not easily replenished & can never return to its original form. guiltily i wonder what a 3 hour mariah concert would look like. what kind of gems would be unearthed. after hearing the rest of the setlist i felt truly blessed to have witnessed "can't let go"--a sappy ballad that starts off "there you are [choir cuts in] HOLDING HER HAND" that only reached #2. she favors newer tracks that engage with a hip hop/r&b sound. she doesn't do "vision of love" & i weep because "vanishing" would have sounded so good solo w/ the pianist.
alas, there is so much to enjoy, we cannot dwell in the what-ifs. everything is beautiful--genuinely. the gown turned in2 a leotard which lingered until it was hidden by a long coat made of boa, swapped eventually for another gown. was there a third gown? mariah closed out her set singing "hero" in an undeniably pink dress, its color one i've only ever seen in lipstick. she was always flanked by 4 male dancers, who first adorned the stage in baggy white suits with white top hats and later dressed down into a vest and pants combo that looked a little Waiter at an Italian Restaurant. at one point, the men enter the audience & grab four superfans to dance in front of--no one grabs me because i don't look like i want one of these vested men to give me a lapdance to "touch my body." fair enough. a gay man who earlier had his YASS hand-painted fan snatched by the elusive chanteuse herself is plucked to the stage & cannot believe it. we all live vicariously through his spiraling joy. for all of the comic & corny glitz of arena background videos, especially after observing miranda lambert's a few weeks before, mariah's set mostly looked strikingly classy. everything was velvet & diamonds. timeless, just like mariah.
in vegas, people have this zombielike stupor, desperately wandering the streets looking for fun. everyone's tired and sweaty, corralled by the insanity of the authoritative sidewalks. some wind up at these concert residencies, ready 2 experience the greatest pop hits of the past--aerosmith, shania twain, cher, something familiar. most members of the crowd are not mariah superfans, in fact they'd likely forgotten many of these songs had been mariah-penned or maybe forgotten the songs altogether. fandom is a kind of insidious thing, certain people's brains & hearts better poised for an infection of undying & all-consuming love. a stupid passion. inevitably the audience was mostly those who wound up at the concert as one might walk into jimmy buffet's margaritaville. for these fans, the artifice, the skill, the history--it's not there; mariah could just as well be a movie, the circus, the wax museum, a fountain that starts on fire (?). for the rest of us, we have found some kind of absolutely braindead solace in our worship of a woman we can never know appearing before us. we are here to watch her prove she still has a voice, can draw a crowd. mariah leaves the stage and returns walking through the aisle next to us--only a few feet away. for a minute, i see her real face, the real way her body moves, the way her cheeks do kind of have this natural glisten, even if it's half facial filler and half $1k concealer. it's too uncanny valley. i scream when she returns to the stage, right where she belongs.
