San Diego review
Mariah Carey: Coasting on a comeback
A revitalized Mariah Carey continues to
delight squealing fans, but her show skimps on songs.
There are two ways of looking at Mariah Carey's
biggest tour in years, the one that didn't quite pack 'em in at San Diego's
ipayOne Center at the Sports Arena Wednesday night but which is guaranteed
sellouts at Staples Center and the newly christened Honda Center (formerly
the Pond) this weekend.
Which view you prefer, however, depends on how
charitable you wish to be toward the street diva and her predictable "Adventures
of Mimi" outing.
Those who insist it's high time Mariah got her
due – those thrilled that her wildly overvalued album "The Emancipation
of Mimi" was both last year's sales champ and an inexplicable Grammy darling
– surely have already determined these shows are the culmination of her
comeback: a well-earned victory lap for a show-biz survivor.
That it is in more ways than one, and only a jealous
hater would deny that she isn't deserving of this celebration. Five years
ago, when Mariah's sudden and erratic descent into tabloid purgatory began,
it seemed unthinkable that she'd ever crawl back to a stature half as significant
as she has now.
Her record-contract woes, the catastrophe of "Glitter,"
her frequent canceled shows, hospital stays and too-public temper tantrums
– plus what very recently appeared to be the premature deterioration of
her unearthly five-octave vocal range – all seemed to spell the end of
her days as an omnipresent powerhouse. Everyone loves a comeback, but the
reality is that they're increasingly rare. Just look at Whitney Houston,
the still-suffering giant Mariah was once modeled after.
Yet, picture-perfect as ever and healthier to
boot, a well-handled Mariah has rebounded to score still more chart-topping
singles; having tied Elvis Presley for second place with 17, she likely
will surpass the Beatles' record 20 before she's 40. What's more, thanks
to a rekindled romance with MTV, she has (somewhat surprisingly) become
a symbol of sexual liberation and female empowerment for a whole new generation
of young women, the clear majority of attendees in San Diego.
Fostering that connection, Mariah has rarely seemed
as down to earth as she does on this tour, routinely striving to reach
out to the audience more literally than figuratively – even going so far
as to invite an Australian fan on stage for a hug, break into unrehearsed
a capella choruses of shouted requests and, for three numbers, performing
on a disco dance floor raised in the center of the arena. (That's now an
old trick everyone from Madonna to the Stones employs, but up to now Mariah,
like Streisand, has remained removed from her audience. The close proximity
this setup affords is sometimes startling.)
Best news of all: She hasn't sung so powerfully
since she began, and back then she never matched her innate force with
so much nuance.
Yes, I still find her rain-falling finger-twiddling
moves – the ones she whips out when she's at her most melismatic – as annoying
as ever. But the last time I saw her, at a 2003 Christmas show in L.A.,
she had to strain to hit her famous dog-whistle notes, most of which came
across hoarse and screechy. Here, however, with no apparent tape-track
sweetening, she soared again and again, adding soulful grit to her lower
register and effortlessly scaling demanding vocal heights on past favorites,
be they slow and sultry (the now-classic "Vision of Love"), breezy ("Dream
Lover," "Honey") or funked-up and strutting ("Heartbreaker").
Fans here justifiably ate it up, squealing for
her every change of skimpy outfit as if they had just spotted Justin Timberlake
streaking. So I doubt many will share my second view of Mariah's meager
spectacle – as a bit of a consumer ripoff.
No one would expect her to dazzle with theatrical
staging à la Madonna or awe with frenetic choreography à
la Janet Jackson. Mariah's got only slightly more groove in her teetering
step than rhythmically challenged Whitney, and as a dancer, well, she's
good at shimmying her voluptuous curves against a pole and writhing alongside
a lighted MIMI marquee – and that's about it.
(Because of that lack of physical exertion, by
the way, this 36-year-old bombshell may have very few years left of sashaying
in nothing but boy shorts, bikini bras and six-inch heels. Her body as
golden as her oft-blown-back tresses, she's still a knockout, but right
away you could tell she's growing self-conscious, as she kept not-so-casually
covering her barely clad backside with a sheer shawl, so as to hide the
effects of gravity.)
Apart from her sex appeal, then, she has only
one weapon: a litany of hits. That's what I'd figure people paid triple-digit
figures to hear. Yet after an hour of her roughly 90-minute set, Mariah
had performed a mere eight songs, not all of them smashes. And after a
pleasing revival of her remake of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There," she
then turned the spotlight over to duet partner and backing vocalist Trey
Lorenz.
For three songs. Including useless covers of Luther
Vandross' "Never Too Much" and Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." Combine that with
not one but two DJ intervals, filled with snippets of crowd-rousing old-school
hip-hop, and a handful of dancer-distracting costume changes, and that's
close to a half-hour of dead space that could have been given to a half-dozen
more songs.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I assume some people might
want more Mariah for their money. As it is, the second half of her set
seemed like a replay of the first half. The tunes were different, of course
– the inspiring (to some) "My All" and "Fly Like a Bird" were earlier,
"Fantasy" and "Hero" were later – and her clinging dress with midriff cutouts
was canary colored the first time we saw it, turquoise the second. Otherwise,
the routine was the same. Step, step, preen, pose – preferably in front
of wind machines at the footlights, the better to make her look like the
cover of her "Mimi" album.
And any sense of a concert-as-a-life's-summation,
which a video intro to her show suggested might come, was also quickly
abandoned. What resulted was just a more grandiose version of what she's
done in the past, on a much larger stage adorned by a gargantuan M.
Which really would have been fine – she needn't
have undergone an extreme makeover – if Mariah had simply offered more
material. Ultimately her show grew tedious. And, frankly, I'd have sacrificed
at least a pair of eye-popping outfits if it would have meant she'd stay
on stage longer, stood at a microphone – and sung her tail off some more.
Source: The
Orange County Register (All rights reserved)
Posted on October the 5th. |
!!!!!!
.
From the medias, I can eventually admit it, they are so dumb and conditioned
to hate, but from fans.... fake asses who go to see Mariah and soon after
critisize her or even insult her, fans who pirated Mariah's tracks, fans
who are happy others didn't get to see Mariah... whatever, the list is
so long, too long.... No, I'm not bitter, it's freakier than Halloween!!!!!
Damizza's
"Guilty" postponed and book with Mariah stories (among others) in the works
