Judging by my empty cupboards (completely bare except for a 12-pack o’ Ramen noodles), the time has come for yet another soul-searching Stash It or Cash It blog post, in which I mine my over-abundant CD collection for expendable yet slightly profitable goods. Hopefully I’ll find a few treasures worth selling at Wherehouse music (or for cherishing–but in this time between paychecks, I’m more keen on cashing in). As I rifle through my collection I stumble upon a Mariah Carey three-fer: her triumphant comeback of sorts The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), the serviceable though inferior Mimi retread E=MC2 (2008) and the pivotal yet impossible-to-remember Charmbracelet (2002).
I will start by saying that Mariah Carey holds a special place in my heart. She speaks to the part of me that’s eternally adolescent, poorly-adjusted and hopelessly insecure. Carey touches the Outcast Mixed-Race Girl in all of us who’s still finding her way and trying to belong. I love Mariah Carey. That said, I need to part ways with my colossal CD collection. Sacrifices must be made. Therefore, I take the opportunity to reflect on Ms. Carey (okay…Mrs. Nick Cannon) and what her music means to me.
Somehow fans began to take Mariah Carey for granted as the 2000s fell upon us. We eased away from her records to attend to a new crop of singers who boasted one name (Ashanti! Pink!), were former Mouseketeers (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, the bushy-haired boy in NSync), or were of Latin heritage (Ricky Martin of Menudo and an intriguingly tacky Fly Girl named Jennifer Lopez). If you were a teenager during Carey’s 90s heyday you may have taken a notion to attend college where the Butterfly singer was passe and, as a result, you started trolling Wuxtry Records or attending shows at the 50 Watt to learn what real music was.
We left her side for a moment, figuring that things would be okay. When we returned, however, things had changed. She was no longer Mariah Carey, the glorious capital-S Singer; she was now one of the Hyphenate, like the aforementioned Lopez: singer-slash-actress. Carey starred in a film called Glitter, a semi-biographical Cinderella tale that is not bad if you set aside all expectations and suspend all disbelief. The film flopped. September 11th 2001 occurred, a day that is not remembered for being the release date of the Glitter soundtrack. Rumors swirled of her deteriorating mental health and she wound up in a hospital, suffering from exhaustion. So far, the New Millennium was not treating Carey so kindly.
Mariah Carey needed to return to her roots, to vent her frustrations and to turn a new page in her career. This brings me to the part of this post where I actually begin discussing her 2000s discography. With the exceptions of Glitter (which I borrowed from the library once, listened to and returned the next day) and her Greatest Hits album, I own all of her New Millennium catalog. I’ll start with her 2002 release Charmbracelet, a necessary yet ungainly album. There were a literal handful of songs that I liked. “You Had Your Chance” is a bouncy, candy-painted kiss-off song aimed at some lousy boyfriend. Not especially groundbreaking but it was one of the only two songs from this album to be put on repeat for at least 20 minutes–when I like a song I really like a song. The other playback-worthy track of this set is a little ditty called “Clown”, the most buzzed-about song of this album. Allegedly, this is a veiled attack against Eminem, the talented yet obnoxious Great White Hope of Hip-Hop whom MC may/may not have dated for a time. This is not a great performance from Carey, marred by a flurry of catty, soft-spoken lyrics that don’t quite pack a satisfying punch. Unfortunately, the only joy derived from this song is in scanning the liner notes in search of clues about the alleged Mariah-Eminem affair. With the exception of these two tracks Charmbracelet simply doesn’t contain as many gems as her other records. Fans know that this is Mariah’s Cathartic Album and that alone is reason enough to appreciate it for what it is. Who’d dare begrudge an artist the space to unburden her heart and soul on record? Charmbracelet was an important release for Carey but it’s an album that, Godblessit, I’m willing to part with.
In an age of instant stardom and rampant selective memory, Mariah Carey’s Charmbracelet served as little reminder of her glory days and offered little reason for her continued relevancy in the music industry. She was no longer the monster hit-maker that she was only a few years before. People like Beyonce were ascending the pop music Everest. Shows like American Idol were cranking out Mariah Carey wannabes, all jockeying for her spot and possessed of two things that Carey no longer had: an instant and ravenous fan base and an easily exploitable naivete about the music business. Carey was still a Grammy winner and a multi-platinum artist but the 90s had just ended and she had reached yet another crossroads. She needed to reclaim her top spot at all costs. Or perhaps she didn’t. But Carey has become notorious for her work ethic and her desire to please. So she regrouped.
2005 saw the release of The Emancipation of Mimi, a return to form that featured all-star guests, great songs and, of course, The Voice. Talk of Carey’s diminished vocal range was beginning to emerge and Mimi largely dispels such talk (among fans, at least–music critics, in keeping with a decade-long pastime of Mariah bashing, were less convinced). This album boasts collaborations with rapper/producer/mogul Jermaine Dupri, the tracks that are, in my opinion, are the best of the album. The first single, “It’s Like That” features a springy 808 and piano-assisted groove, simple lyrics and au courant (for 2005, anyway) pop culture references in which the “purple is taking [her]higher” and she’s the lotion to lackluster ashy “chickens”. It’s a fun, lighthearted song followed by the plaintive piano driven (and JD-produced) “We Belong Together,” which features one of Carey’s strongest vocals up to that point. As is the fashion nowadays, Carey’s vocals are augmented by Auto-Tune and filters, lending to the belief that MC’s pipes ain’t what they used to be. Either way, this is one of Mariah Carey’s strongest showings in years. She ably teams up with the Neptunes, en vogue hitmakers in ‘05, for a few contemporary cuts but mostly hues closer to her Pop&B pedigree. This was the album that saw the return of Mariah Carey and, for me, is a keeper.
Ever the prolific and productive recording artist, Carey is now gearing up to release a new album, Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel. The first single “Obsessed” is another entry into the Eminem-Response Record sub-genre of pop music–actually this is a small subgenre as most of Em’s targets are beleaguered teeny-boppers who are, baffingly, scared shitless of a near-40-year old still rapping about his prescription drug addictions, bad childhood and unfortunate love life…but I digress. “Obsessed” is a frothy sort of non-song designed for massive radio play, video countdown over-saturation and rampant downloading. She hits back at Eminem, again allegedly, by calling him “delusional” and proclaiming that “you’re a mom and pop/ I’m a corporation.” So far, I’m less-than-excited about the new album but I’m pretty sure that I’ll buy it anyway. This is Mariah Carey, after all.
My ambivalence about the upcoming Memoirs mirrors my similar feelings about Carey’s post-Mimi exercise, E=MC2 in 2008. Her lead single was a chirpy, fluffy number called “Touch My Body,” a come-hither coo that beseeches a lover to, you know, touch her body. The low point of the song comes with her imploring her suitor to not post their “flick on YouTube”. I should have taken my initial disdain for this track as an indicator of what to expect from the this album–and should have stayed far away. This track, unfortunately, exemplifies everything that’s gone askew with Carey’s career. While I can appreciate the drive to stay current, “Touch My Body” and every other record on E=MC2 are trying too hard to appeal to the teenyboppers and twentysomethings that she no longer is one of –the kids more likely to buy a Rihanna CD (or, rather, to download her album) than they are to dig into a Mariah record. Many of Mariah’s original fans tuned out when she shed her marriage to Tommy Mottola…and her clothes. So maybe there is a certain savvy and wisdom in courting a new generation of fans. But the main ingredient of her 90s Wonder Years has gone AWOL as the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close–her powerful voice.
We’ve finally hit upon the most troubling aspect of her 2000s output. I’ll preface this part of my posting with a nod to the fact that voices change with age: they peak in the mid 30s and lose range from then on. That is the unfortunate rub of making divadom your stock and trade. No one can be an octave-scaling goddess forever. Whitney Houston can’t do it. Aretha Franklin of today doesn’t hold a candle to the Aretha of the 60s through the 80s. I witnessed a performance by Etta James on Austin City Limits in which she didn’t even attempt to scale the heights of her classic “Tell Mama”. Voices change. That, of course, is not my growing frustration with Mariah Carey. She’s written very popular and memorable songs but she’s been accused of a certain vapidity. She’s been harangued for showboating at the expense of true soul. This becomes a problem if you are a singer known more for the sizzle instead of the steak. What happens when the sizzle starts to die down?
As much as I love Mariah Carey, she came to prominence on the heels of her spectacular voice…and little else. In her defense, of course, when you’ve got a one-in-a-million voice like hers you don’t need much else. You don’t need much else but it’s nice to have for a rainy day. Carey’s still got a gorgeous voice when she’s using it to full effect but she hasn’t really been doing that for the past few years. Does she choose to play it safe? To coo to expensive, diverting beats, content to coast along with the diminished standards of today’s pop music? Has she truly lost The Voice? Who am I to say? E=MC2 typifies this problem with reliance upon Auto-Tune (again) on the T-Pain-featuring “Migrate,” a dumb song but one of the only ones from this album that I managed to enjoy. The other song I like is “Bye Bye”, a sweet ode to lost loved ones that, in my opinion, is hampered by its self-referential tone (”you never got a chance to see how good I done/ you never got to see me back at number one”). But the other tracks strike the ear as so much pandering to the trends of the today’s fickle pop market. “Cruise Control” is a clunky reggae-ish midtempo joint featuring a Bob Marley scion and Carey’s distracting attempt at Jamaican patois. “I’m That Chick” is amusing in that she, apparently, “do’z it naturally/hypnotize like Biggie,” a proclamation that rings as the least natural lyric of this entire album.
Mariah Carey is endlessly fascinating in that she will always be Mariah Carey, the most successful female recording artist of all time. She no longer has anything to prove to anyone–not her fans, not the industry, not the critics. She may not even have anything to prove to herself anymore. Perhaps that is the conceit that drives her albums these days. Gone are the days of sweeping ballads, big curly hair and concealed cleavage. We’ve got the Mariah Carey that Mariah’s always wanted to be–free to dress like a 14 year-old girl, free to release the hip-hop-tinged songs that she’s always wanted to, rich enough to not be pressured by financial gain when it comes to her music. She’s apparently happily married and has everything she’s ever wanted. While fans like me wouldn’t mind her recording a standards album, she just wants to have fun. Who wins, though? Is it wrong to expect a certain standard of Mariah or should we, as fans, just be happy to go along on her journey? This is a question I ask myself whenever I listen to E=MC2 and become irritated. Perhaps I should stash this record for posterity but somehow I don’t think it was created for me.
Charmbracelet: Cash It
The Emancipation of Mimi: Stash It
E=MC2: Cash It
Tracks Worth Saving: “Migrate”, “Bye Bye”
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