That Mariah Carey, she has her detractors — but can we allow a little
post-Live 8 credit where it’s due? Many lesser singers would have been
nervous about following Madonna with her miracle famine survivor. But with
20 singing African orphans in tow and a dress that appeared to be sewn on to
her, Carey’s set was, in its way, no less forgettable. Her requests for a
microphone stand went either unnoticed or unheard; she was luckier with her
requests for water, but her tiny sparrow-sips cast doubt over just how
thirsty she really was; then, when she tried to get one of the orphans to
say hello to the watching world, numb terror descended upon the poor
youngster.
Anyone for whom Carey remains the quintessential pop diva may not have been
surprised by the succession of mini-dramas that punctuated her 15-minute
slot. What is surprising however is her reaction the following day. Far from
being embarrassed at the previous night’s events, Carey seems amused as the
rest of us. “It was fine in rehearsals,” she says, pulling her ruched peach
dress over her knees, “but when he saw himself on the huge screen, I think
it totally freaked him out.”
What a nightmare, I say. You must have wanted to strangle him right there and
then. Carey smiles, albeit uncertainly. “Do you know they are orphans?”
Sorry, I tell her. I didn’t literally mean it about strangling him. “Right,
OK . . . because they were actually so cool, all of them. Anyway, he did say
hello in the end, but he didn’t scream it like I wanted him to.”
Perhaps it helps that she has brazened out far bigger ignominies than this
one. In 2001, her record deal with Virgin (reportedly worth $80 billion)
ended almost as soon as it began when she starred in the semi-biopic Glitter
— a movie which, according to one review at the time, “provided absolutely
no intentional pleasures for adult moviegoers”. Anchored to the film’s
awfulness, the eponymous album performed so badly that Carey’s new
paymasters paid her a further $28 million just so that she didn’t record any
more albums for them.
If Carey can laugh about it now, it probably helps that she’s just spent a
month atop the US charts with her current album, The Emancipation of Mimi.
At the time, though, the singer says she remembers a kind of panic setting
in. Convinced that with enough promotion she could “save the project”, Carey
threw herself into a “21-hour-a-day promotional schedule” — adjourning only
to post unhinged messages on her website. “I just can’ t trust anybody any
more right now, because I don’t understand what’s going on,” went one — a
point underscored by her appearance on MTV’s Total Requests Live,
in which she handed ice-cream to her fans wearing little more than a
T-shirt.
With the benefit of some hindsight and a lot of therapy, Carey adds that her
ensuing collapse — on her mother’s kitchen floor — was the culmination of
factors that could be dated all the way back to the beginning of her career,
when her long-held acting ambitions were smothered by a husband — 20 years
her senior — whose name she still would rather not utter if she can help it.
Seasoned Carey-watchers will, of course, need no introduction to Tommy Mottola
— the legendarily flamboyant Sony godfather who swept the teenage singer
from waitressing to Grammy-chomping global dominance. He gave her a career;
in the circumstances she felt it impolite not to give him what he wanted —
her hand in marriage. Aged 23, Carey said goodbye to her friends and her
mother (her Venezuelan father had fled the family home when she was three)
and moved upstate to the town of Hillsdale with, to quote its official
website, “its open spaces, rural character and friendly people”.
“It wasn’t all bad,” she insists limply. “I had a barn with horses and all
that kind of stuff. (Tommy) loved it. He was very much like, Let’s go stare
at the foliage. After a while though, I got to calling it Hills-jail.After
that first three-and-a-half-hour ride in the car, when the radio station
stops about an hour into the journey, the appeal quickly starts to wear
thin. And this was a journey we would make every Thursday. I would want to
put on my Wu-Tang Clan CD and he would want to listen to Frank Sinatra.”
As depictions go, this generational stand-off speaks volumes about so much of
Mariah Carey’s Nineties output — how a street-smart young New Yorker seemed
content to become the global queen of supper-club R&B. No matter how
much her recent output may have improved, there are people around the world
who will struggle to forgive her for the likes of Hero and the Boyz
II Men-abetted atrocity One Sweet Day. For her part, Carey doesn’t
seem over-eager to make a case for their artistic worth. “The songs that I
tend to like the best are the grittier songs that not everybody will
necessarily warm to.”
By “grittier”, she’s referring to the songs written during the latter years of
her marriage to Mottola, when they moved into a new mansion in New York. One
such tune can be found on the 1999 Rainbow album. “I gravitated
towards a patriarch,” she sings on Petals, “So young
predictably/ I was resigned to spend my life/ With a maze of misery.”
Tellingly, Carey brings up the subject of Joss Stone, who she met prior to her
own set: “I was struck how she was mingling with all the other singers. When
I started out, the same age as her, I never got to meet any famous artists.
I wasn’t allowed to. It was bleak.”
It doesn’t take a genius to work out what a song like the 2002 “comeback”
single Through the Rain was about. With her marriage, the Virgin
debacle and that breakdown all behind her, America offered Carey the leg-up
of redemption after a soul-baring Oprah interview. The song was another one
of those that she wrote to order — not a bad trick if you can manage it. “Through
the Rain (was) specifically made to be mass appeal,” — but she says that
for the first time, it earned her the right to make “an album that is 100
per cent Mariah”. It’s not an implausible claim either. Compare those cheesy
early singles to the block party R&B and ripe hip-hop jams of this
year’s The Emancipation of Mimi — complete with cameos from
Snoop Dogg and Nelly. Mariah Carey, now 35, sounds like a woman living out
her adult life in reverse. And thankfully, someone’s finally told her that
it really isn’t necessary to sing eight notes when one would do perfectly
well.
“Do you not like that stuff? Well no, I don’t do as much of it any more. Maybe
I no longer feel the pressure to bring down the house from the first note.”
She must also be aware that it’s a singing style that has left a bitter legacy
across the karaoke bars of Europe and America. Any regrets? “You think
that’s all my fault? To be fair, karaoke did exist before me. And people
with big voices did exist before me. Would it be diva-esque of me to
object?” I’m not sure, I tell her. “Diva” can take in a multitude of foibles
and eccentricities. “Well, my mother was an opera singer,” she ponders, “so
I’m comfortable with the old-fashioned meaning of the word diva. And if
somebody said you were the cupcake diva of Manhattan, that would be OK too.
But I’m not, like, this hysterical woman — I promise you!” At which point,
she starts to laugh. Hysterically.
We Belong Together (Universal) is out now
I WANT IT YESTERDAY: DIVA HABITS
- Give her what she wants Dame Shirley Bassey likes, “Breakfast tea, milk
in first, hot water on the side.”
- She can’t wear that! Or can she...? Already this week we’ve had
Mariah at Live 8. Plus the tomato-meets-flamenco confection of Diana
Ross at Blenheim Palace.
- She’s unlucky in love The no-good love rat of a boyfriend is
essential. Joan Collins/ Peter Holm; Charlotte Church/ “that dosser DJ”;
Liza Minnelli/ David Gest.
- Getting an addiction Minnelli, again (following in her mother’s
footsteps). Ross, again.
- Slam! All divas hang up Like Becks, they may sell mobile phones, but
their greatest talent is switching them off, dramatically,
mid-conversation.
- The entourage “Little me” must always be surrounded by a huge team of
bodyguards, stylists, leg assistants and lawyers.
- The dodgy holiday snaps Let the paps show you minus fake eyelashes and
then, in comparison, every stage entrance will be a triumph.
- Boys can do it too Little Richard, Dame Elton, Saint Bob and the new
arrival, Bono, “give me back my ‘kind-of-iconic’ hat”.
- I Will Survive J Lo’s Rebirth, Cher’s Living
Proof, Celine Dion’s A New Day. . .
