1/27/10 DAR Constitution Hall
Seating capacity TBA
Click here to access the venue site.
Price range: $249.25, $68.25

Billboard Boxscore:
Rank Artist/Event: Mariah Carey, RydazNrtisT
Total Gross: $216,247
Show Date: Jan. 27, 2010
Shows/Sellouts: 2,430 / 3,166  (1/0)

1/27/10 concert
Setlist:
1. Butterfly Intro/Daydream Interlude
2. Shake It Off
3. Touch My Body
4. Fly Like a Bird
5. Make It Happen
6. Angels Cry
7. Subtle Invitation
8. It's Like That
9. The Impossible
10. Love Hangover/Heartbreaker
11. Honey
12. It's A Wrap
13. My All
14. Always Be My Baby
15. Obsessed
16. We Belong Together
17. Hero

Pictures:

Review:

Concert review: Mariah Carey at DAR Constitution Hall
The legendary songstress Mariah Carey gave a somewhat spirited performance last night during her 90-minute show at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington.

At times, Carey was magical. She showed off the  incredible vocal range that has made her arguably one of the top female vocalists of her time.

She also displayed a noticeably heftier figure that she squeezed for dear life into unflattering outfits. (At one point, when she descended from the rafters on a swing wearing a sparkly champagne-colored gown, she looked sort of like a sausage wrapped in ruffles and rhinestones.)

Although Carey emerged at about 8:30 p.m. and ended the show about 10 p.m., her actual performance time was much shorter.

If you count the outfit changes, the stage breaks she took to sip champagne and the ultra tacky onstage makeup touch-up, Carey only performed for about an hour ...

"I know. I know. It's diva behavior," she said to the audience.

She wasn't joking.

It was truly unfortunate for fans who paid as much as $149 a ticket to watch Carey rhythmlessly wobble from one side of the stage to the other.

Carey only sang about a dozen songs. (It seemed like more Michael Jackson songs were played during her concert than her own material.) Absent were "Vision of Love," "Emotions" and "One Sweet Day."

A dozen or so songs for an artist starting out is understandable. But for Carey, who has 20 years of solid material -- "We Belong Together" was recently named song of the decade by Billboard -- it is completely unforgivable. Shame on you, Mariah. Shame.

Carey was golden when she performed hits like "Shake It Off" and "It's Like That" from 2005's "Emancipation of Mimi" and "Touch My Body" from 2008’s E=MC². They were all crowd pleasers.

On more than one occasion, Carey attempted to show off her whistle register (when she hits those really, really high notes). When Carey began a song with the whistle register, like she did with "It’s A Wrap," she was golden.Sadly, Carey had a tendency to lose that note when the music blared in the background -- especially at the end of a song.

Toss in a couple more songs -- the crowd pleaser "Always Be My Baby," "My All" from "Honey" and "Obsessed," as well as some background dancers and that was it, folks.

Overall, it was a disappointment. We all know that Carey can sing the phonebook. We know that she has an arsenal of hits. And we all know that she is capable of bringing down the house. I just wish that she would have put all of these weapons together for a concert that didn’t cut corners.
Source: Baltimore Sun (All rights reserved)

Carey is currently touring in support of last September’s “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel,” the lowest selling album in her platinum-spangled discography. The disc isn’t horrendous. Its failure merely illustrates how this wretched economy can transform yesterday’s invincible uber-star into today’s latest music-biz casualty. Wednesday’s modest Constitution Hall environs were also a considerable step down from the much-larger Verizon Center where Carey made her last Washington appearance in 2006. And this gig didn’t even sell out.

Cleverly then, the singer kick-started her 90-minute set with “Shake it Off,” a strutting 2005 kiss-off that felt both cocky and carefree. Delivered in the breathy coo that’s become her trademark in recent years, Carey used her voice to quickly establish a casual intimacy with the audience, as if she were whispering the song’s verses in the
crowd’s collective ear.

They replied with shouts, and screams of “I love you Mariah!!!” that not only got the singer’s attention, but a smile and a finger wave, too.

Perhaps she was waving just to flaunt the blinding stones that adorned her fingers. Diamonds covered almost all of Carey's accoutrements: her microphone, her microphone stand,her shoes,even the ear-piece she wore so she could hear her backing band as they chipped away on an elevated platform behind her.

It wasn’t always so easy to hear Carey, however. On her less acrobatic vocal runs, the singer's words got lost amid the haze of the backing tracks, the voices of her back-up singers and the cavernous acoustics that threaten to turn every show at Constitution Hall into sonic miso soup.

This didn’t bode well for the relatively staid selections off “Memoirs,” but somehow, Carey imbued those stiff tunes with a fresh zeal. Album filler “It’s A Wrap” suddenly felt almost as dynamic and spry as “Heartbreaker” or “Honey,” two bona fide hits that preceded it.

Mercifully, Carey went easy on the ballads, slipping into a robe and parking herself in a seat for “My All.” The song pushed the singer through almost every strata of her register and after its big finish, she was carried offstage in the arms of a dancer who appeared
about two-thirds her size. Turns out, he was whisking Carey away for her third and final costume change of the night. (For those keeping count: four gowns in all, each one impossibly sparkly.)

Reversing the one-two punch she delivered at Verizon in 2006, Carey closed the set with the unimpeachable “We Belong Together” and encored with the power ballad “Hero.”

Excited fans rushed the aisles with their camera phones, angling for the closest shot they could get. Carey’s black sequined dress became a disco ball, reflecting hundreds of camera flashes back into the crowd as she hit the song’s sentimental crescendo.

The superstar waved goodnight and feet began shuffling to the exits. “Did you see how close I was?” one aisle-crashing teen asked her friend, positively beaming. Glee that genuine makes the crumbling of the American music industry seem like a truly wonderful thing.
 
 
 
 

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Heroes of Mariah 2000
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