Mariah Carey: She’s Mariahculous
We asked Sam McKinniss, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Chris Randle, Stephanye Watts, and Blanche DeveBois, why do we love Mariah?
JUNE 24TH, 2014
Mariah’s origin story reads like Cinderella's: a prodigious voice from Long Island leaves a tape of her tunes at a music execs’ ball. Starstruck at her first high-pitch E, industry giant Tommy Mottola hunts her down for weeks, and, upon finding his future bride, signs her and promises her the keys to the pop music kingdom. Unmitigated success is met with due froth and pomp, and there isn't one note Mariah can't hit. But once the millennium turns, so does her world, and a little fairy-tale revisionism means her career begins to follow that of the archetypal female pop star: sexualized ingénue-turned-basket case-turned-yesterday’s news, with a string of bad-idea boyfriends to boot.
Decades later, though, Mariah continues——against all odds——to hover near sanity. If she's not on top, she can still hit the top notes. She's got a younger bae and babies, a new album, and a relentless e(x)clusiveness that keeps us begging: Why do we love Mariah? Which is to say, why do we love to put women in the gladiator arena of pop music, where we pay to see them soar, and cheer when they get slaughtered, and sing their gospel when they resurrect?
Music and voice aside, the woman radiates both near-delusional confidence and heart-on-her-sleeve-humanity. She’s laughing with us, at her, but she also knows she laughs last. Or does she? We asked five Mariah fans how they're feeling after the release of Me… I am Mariah, The Elusive Chanteuse.
The participants:Sam McKinniss is an artist and writer in New York. He saw Mariah Carey in concert one time at the Wang (lol) Theater in Boston when she was touring the “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” album. He tweets at @wkndpartyupdate.
Sarah Nicole Prickett is the editor-in-chief of ADULT and a full-time writer.
Chris Randle is a writer in Toronto who’s making the comic Charivari with Mia Schwartz for ADULT. Some aggrieved scrub on Twitter recently described him as a “confused Marilyn-Manson-esque androgynous mess.”
Stephanye Watts’ first short story, "The Pig Who Loved to Eat Pork," was published in the local Philly paper when she was five years old. Her quest to discover everything cool and cheap below 14th Street and Brooklyn is chronicled on her blog. She is also an R&B historian.
Blanche DeveBois is an aspiring documentary filmmaker from Miami, Florida who now lives in New York. She once touched the hem of Mariah Carey’s garment and it changed her life forever.
Put simply——why Mariah Carey? If she remains elusive, why do you consider yourself one of the millions who chase?Stephanye: I was 4 years old when Mariah’s first album came out. My mom was a bit older, so as much as I loved whatever R&B and hip-hop was doing at the time, I had a strong affinity for straight up sangaz like Patti LaBelle and Anita Baker. “Vision of Love” dropped and I was floored. There was someone that sang this huge power ballad AND she was super young?! (I was around adults a lot, so in my mind 20somethings were my contemporaries). Mariah was a unicorn for sure! My mom bought the album for me and I heard songs like “Vanishing” and “All In Your Mind” and immediately inducted myself into the Lambily. There was a solid block of time that I clocked out (“Rainbow” to “Charmbracelet”), but the voice and impeccable songwriting on “Emancipation of MiMi” brought me back.
I honestly don’t get this whole “elusive chanteuse” thing because I’ve always felt like Mariah was one of the most transparent and honest entertainers of all time. If anything, Beyoncé is the true elusive chanteuse! Mariah writes all of her songs so every album feels like we’re peaking into her personal diary. She also has that Mary J. Blige style of singing that makes you feel like you’re in the situation being sung about. You don’t even want to know how many times four-year-old Stephanye stood in her room crying and singing to “I Don’t Wanna Cry.”
Sam: It’s fairly simple. I go to a studio and emote all day long. I barely even make any work except that I’m working all of the time. This is Mariah Carey’s work-style too, I think. The moment I got fully on-board with the Mariah Carey project was in 1997 when the video for “Honey” came out from theButterfly album, which is just like such the perfect song for her. The video: hilarious while also glamorous for hair and bathing suits. With that song/album she suddenly was doing more than just cute ballads with Boyz II Men, she was full diva, flirting dutifully with everybody including Wish & Krayzie Bone (“Breakdown”), and thriving at it. This impressed me because at the time I was learning how to flirt. Also, moving on: “We Belong Together”——greatest song of the 2000’s. That’s just the irrefutable fact. The science behind it is perfect.
Blanche: The strength of Mariah’s voice combined with the shameless vulnerability of her lyrics is empowering to me in a clichéd way, and I won't pretend I'm above it. Her hits speak for themselves, but it wasn’t until high school, when my cousin showed me the video for “Touch My Body”——with Mariah prancing around in a shimmery dress, playing laser tag with Kenneth from 30 Rock, obviously being totally untouchable——that I really became interested in her as a public figure. I fell in love with Mariah at her worst, so it has been a blossoming love affair as I journey back into her past, and now, into her future.
One of the great things her music and elsewhere, she wears her heart on her sleeve and shares everything, to the point that all she could come up with in the way of a private treasure to share on this last album was a generic drawing by a 3 ½ year old. But what I also love about Mariah is that it is almost impossible to discern how much of her whole persona is a delusional unraveling disaster and how much is a calculated performance piece. In almost everything she says and does, her degree of self-awareness eludes our understanding. And she is full of contradictions. On “Honey” she sings “I can’t be elusive with you, honey” and then on this new album she calls herself the elusive chanteuse. Can she be elusive or no? A chanteuse never tells. And that’s elusive, to me.
SNP: In high school I wasn’t a nerd (Kenneth from 30 Rock!), but I wasn’t cool either. I was an ex-homeschooled freak who stayed skinny as a +%%+% until at least Grade 11 and a half. And I was smart, I could write, so of course I just wanted to be a pop star. Which isn’t to say I wanted to be Mariah, but that Mariah, circa Butterfly, was my daydream future-sexy self. She embodied the promises of hormonal birth control: perfect skin, pneumatic curves, sex as “lovemaking.” She was all hope, no failure. I was forever spelling out some unrequited crush in multi-coloured inks in my diary, sure that wishing would make it so; Mariah felt me, from “Dreamlover” to “Want You.” Even the Bible-core single “When You Believe” sounded, in that five-star contralto, like a guide to getting everything you want. One look at Mariah, you knew: that girl never survived a day in her life. I didn't for a second relate to her; my realest self was like a hundred per cent Lauryn Hill singing “it hurts so bad.” I was embarrassed to love Mariah. But she never seemed embarrassed, and that was——%@*%, is——an aspiration.
Chris: My first encounter was the “Heartbreaker” music video, a key late-’90s text——those ushers leaping through the theatre lobby, the ass-smacking dance moves, possibly the first example of the “dark wig = haughty sociopath” trope. I didn’t appreciate the song itself until I began my protracted defection from boys clutching at guitars and books to music at ease with sensuality, with femininity. (Any tension between reading and !$@@$%@ was imaginary, it turned out.) As someone who pretty clearly exults in her own body, Mariah has been a corrective and now an inspiration; how do you begin to thank a person for that, demonstrating one of the alternatives to numbed maleness? Plus I’m listening to “Always Be My Baby” at the moment, and what other songs make you want to smile and cry and dance simultaneously like that one?
SNP: Chris!!! INDEED. I barely got married, but even still, I refused do it unless “Always Be My Baby" was played.
While Queen Bey is controlled——a boss——Carey, as Rich Juzwiak noted in an A+ post on Gawker, reifies effort. She's the archetypal diva, fluttering with narcissism, her career defined by the all the notes only she can hit. If her initial success was defined early in her career by her mass commercial appeal, the current interest in Carey feeds of her exuberant "persona." She's a joke in on the joke, her arrogance now hoax following damaged vocal chords and a post-Glitter demise. What do you make of Carey's career trajectory and her diva attitude?Stephanye: Mariah has two things that help any artist bounce back after major failure: a strong catalog and hardcore fans. She took the world by continuous storm for 10 years, until the MTV meltdown happened and things got weird. But when “Emancipation” came out, it was as if nothing had ever transpired. And the Lambs are ridiculously unwavering. I heard that she had a not so greatmorning show performance recently, but my friends that told me about it listen to her new album every day without fail. The Lambs are ridiculously unwavering.
Sam: I love emotional jokes. Actually, I think all good jokes are extremely emotional and come from completely devastated individuals. Comfortable people are not funny. So like, whatever, yeah I get it she’s a disaster sometimes and sometimes that’s very funny from a spectator’s POV but usually I choose to believe that she’s devastated all of the time and trying very hard not to embody the joke, she’s trying to be host to the voice that vanquishes misery, pain and despair.
BTW, I want Beyoncé to take over the world, just take it B, take it. I think the peoples of the earth would suddenly and for once find themselves in competent hands. I was touched when, on Mariah’s recent birthday, Beyoncé’s people posted a birthday shout-out on Facebook in celebration of Mariah, because this is exactly how world leaders ought to behave toward one another.
SNP: Sam, I love you. Everyone, how did Mariah and Beyoncé turn out to be the exact same color? Look at them in the 90s, look at them now. These two are the best proof we’re all going to be “deep honey beige” or whatever in 2073.
Chris: I do wonder how much Mariah’s current woes are unique to her, rather than grim coincidence. Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant, the most critic-like of pop stars, once suggested that his species tends to reach an “imperial phase,” this interregnum of blithe cultural domination. And at two decades or so of #1 hits, Mariah enjoyed an epoch-sized one. Even when Glitter bombed, she was a fixation, albeit ridiculed; what’s striking and depressing is how many people aren’t talking about her at all anymore. Her towering melismatic tendencies have fallen out of style in favor of Aaliyah’s languor (or the snapback boys fetishizing her aesthetic/image), but I suspect that Mariah may just be the biggest victim of R&B’s ongoing commercial marginalization, which is to say: Radio programmers like Iggy Azalea more than actual black women. So I support Sam’s call for a Beyoncé-led revolution. We could use “XO” as the coded signal, like they did in Portugal.
Blanche: If we are comparing Mariah and Beyoncé, I’d like to say that for a second there, while watching the HBO debut of Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream, I had the terrible thought that I might be witnessing Beyoncé’s Glitter moment. False alarm, thankfully, but I still felt disillusioned. Beyoncé had promised an insightful and revealing tell-all, but she couldn't relinquish control of her image enough to come across convincingly as the vulnerable, misunderstood artist she so desperately wanted us to see. It was a shocking realization of how far Beyoncé is from reality. I think Mariah could have pulled that documentary off better because she owns being out of touch with reality.
SNP: I have to stop you here and say: what if Beyoncé's image is her reality? What if she just isn't vulnerable? I found it impossible to watch the stolen surveillance vid of Solange, Jay, and Bey in that elevator, for several reasons, but I saw the paparazzi photos taken immediately afterward. Everyone looked a little pissed, a little ruffled, except Beyonce. Beyonce looked like a 19th-century portrait.
Stephanye: “Diva” has a negative connotation to it that I’m not sure Beyonce or Mariah actually embody. Whitney was a diva and artists always said how great of a mentor she was. Patti is a diva and while working with her a few years ago, she was sweet as pie. I believe the same goes for Mariah. In a recent Breakfast Club interview, Mariah brought her own lighting and bottles of champagne, but she was in the studio hanging out and talking like she was at a family BBQ. Dame Dash shared a few weeks ago on Instagram that when ODB was released from jail, Mariah went with him to pick Old Dirty up. Da Brat said that Mariah came and visited her when she was on “vacation.” The clink is the last place I’d think a diva would willingly go, but Mariah was there. Even if she was a monster, I think Mariah worked hard enough to get away with it.
Blanche: To me a diva is someone who embodies the contrast between supreme, almost inhuman power and strength and the potential to break down at any moment. Beyoncé cites Mariah as one of her biggest influences and they both have the power side down. They both rose to fame for their unparalleled vocal prowess and their glamorous, larger-than-life presentation (and dancing, for Bey). But I think Mariah has had a handle on the vulnerability side of divahood for years and Beyoncé hasn’t really figured out her relationship to that yet.
Who's actually seen Glitter? Any reactions?Stephanye: I prefer to not speak about that time in my life.
Sam: It literally sucks and I hate it. Glitter came out ten days after the attacks on 9/11/2001. The soundtrack came out on the actual day, 9/11. Just try, try to imagine anything more wrong for the moment, a more inappropriate film with which to try and distract the American people from collective bereavement.
Watch her in Precious. She’s amazing in it and so is everyone else in that movie.
Blanche: My dad would never let me rent Glitter despite my numerous attempts to casually slip it into our shopping cart at Blockbuster.
Sarah: In my high school “computers class”——can you even? it’s like, “books class”——I did an entire final project on Mariah Carey’s Glitter, so yes. And: no comment. I agree with Sam that we should all watch Mimi in Precious, then think twice about calling her vain.
Chris: For a while last year, my friend David and I wanted to screen a series of failed pop star movies:Can’t Stop the Music, Under the Cherry Moon, whatever the Ashlee Simpson one was called. (“Failure” defined strictly in a commercial sense, because I love Under the Cherry Moon, which resembles a ‘30s screwball comedy script-doctored by Jean Genet.) Then he decided to write a novel, so I still haven’t seen Glitter. But I can recommend at least one scene from Can’t Stop the Music.
Carey's known for throwing fanciful theories around her own senescence. She's "eternally twelve." What do you think of Carey's relationship to her age, given the pre-pubescent ogling that follows female pop vocalists throughout their careers?Stephanye: Even though she has worn things in recent years that were better suited for scrawny, first-album Mariah, I don’t feel like she’s chasing youth. She has a youthful spirit and personality but I don’t see her trying to keep up with the spring chickens in the industry. She has this “I’m too grown for that” air about her that keeps her from tragedies like Kris Jenner.
Sam: I’m proud of her for becoming a mother with Nick Cannon. Now she gets to make sure dem babies remain in the public eye as they grow, thus shattering all hope of them ever achieving normalcy in adulthood. Not to be gross.
Stephanye: J.Lo has been putting 21 year olds to shame since she was 21, so we would all look at her with the side eye if she popped up in some modest Lily Pulitzer frock. On the other hand, Mariah’s brand was never ‘young and sexy’, so she doesn’t have to play the forever young game like other singers her age. The world gave Mariah the thumbs up to be a married mom that plays with her kids in evening gowns.
Blanche: I remember being so enamored when, as a 12 year old, I watched the Mariah Cribs episodewhere she shows her guest room wallpapered and upholstered floor to ceiling with butterflies and self-identifies more than once “as someone who loves dolphins.” I totally told all my friends at school the next day that I had a butterfly room in my house and that I was a dolphin. So she definitely has the hook for 12 year olds and considering the current trend in music criticism to so readily and enthusiastically support the taste of this age bracket, aren’t they the only ones whose opinions really matter? Despite being into butterflies in a fetishistic way, I definitely agree with Stephanye that Mariah gives off a grown-up air. She sees herself as a seasoned pro who has been around the block already. The “eternally 12” line seems like more like an elusive myth than a life ethos.
Have you listened the new album? How would you compare it to her past work?Stephanye: I love the new album! I’m actually singing “Make it Look Good” obnoxiously loud in my head at this very moment. I hope that this doesn’t get me kicked out of the Lambily, but I was nervous that this album wouldn’t be on par or top her previous work because the singles were pretty bleh. Her last album “Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel” with The-Dream was flawless, but had a different sound than what we were used to from Mariah. Every singer has a team that brings out the best in them. Janet had Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Brandy had Rodney Jerkins. Mariah has Jermaine Dupri and Big Jim.
“Me…I Am Mariah” brought her back to the basics and reminded me why I fell in love with her in the first place. Mariah hasn’t done a classic power ballad in ages, but this album has really good ones. All of the hip-hop collabs feel very “Fantasy” and “Honey,” but in no way dated. The songs with trap drums have 90s Mariah vocals, so she isn’t looking like the old lady up in the club. “Camouflage” has the choir background that 90s Mariah always had in tow. I also really love that she brought back the old R&B album trend of including a gospel song in the track listing. Also, Mary J. Blige and R. Kelly duets?! Epic! “Me…I Am Mariah” has songs that I’ll be singing around the house to a zillion years from now.
Sam: Instant classic. “Money ($ * / …)” is really good midcareer Mariah. Of course she’s doing gospel on here as well (“Heavenly (No Ways Tired/Can’t Give Up Now)”) because don’t forget she rules at Christmas and being some kind of televangelist in praise of her own self but like, whatever, I’ll pray.
Sarah: Yes, Steph. I’m in tooooo ultraviolent a mood to go for “Heavenly” right now, but the new Mariah does feel like a classic——not to be confused with merely “classic Mariah,” which anyway is redundant. We expect our pop stars to stay new, not just young. But Mariah was never trendy. She was excessively accessible. Like, she could still be a beautician on Long Island——dating a plastic surgeon, !$@@$%@ the pool boy, writing herself scripts for a zillion pills. I agree, Stephanye, that there’s long been something fully “grown” about her; she also reminds me of my nouveau-bougie suburban ex-boyfriend’s mom. This doesn’t totally answer this question, but it also partly answers the question above it.
Chris: Yes, really good album, feels beautifully unbothered. “Go to Mimi on your contacts and press DELETE.” Elsewhere, talking about “Meterorite,” I wrote: “Carey shows off her famous range now and then throughout The Elusive Chanteuse, building up vocal force without any late-career rasp——see "Cry" or "The Art of Letting Go" ——but here she admits only the faintest solidity. Q-Tip’s production smears her voice with subtle processing until it distantly recurs, like blurred neon. Anyone who finds her wordy lyrics contrived should listen to how she phrases this hook, ‘me-te-or-ite-ite,’ as if the syllables were cold light from a strobe. It’s the kind of ease that perfectionists alone can feign.” I think my favorite track is “Dedicated,” an ambivalent rebuke to Nas nostalgia that still makes its vintage Wu-Tang sample knock.
Blanche: The album plays daily in my car stereo. Do I occasionally wish it would magically turn into “Daydream”? Yes. But I still love it and plan to keep it in heavy rotation. As mentioned above, we get exhilarating Mariah vocals, the breathy and the soulful, and catchy retro sounds. The album opens with Mariah’s trademark raw expression of heartbreak and hope in “Cry” and goes on to cover a variety of other themes like loving your children and being famous. “You Don’t Know What To Do” is my favorite. It’s just a bumping soaring unabashed disco party and I can’t get enough. “It’s A Wrap” was a great discovery on the Deluxe album and “Heavenly” builds to such a powerful ending as the last track. I really can’t listen to that song “Thirsty” though.
Latter-day pop divas have found a seat at the reality-TV judges table. What did you think of Carey's performance as arbiter compared to Britney Spear's or Christina Aguilera's? And what about her "feud" with fellow judge Nicki Minaj? Mere TV-rating-boosting fluff or perfect shade throwing?Stephanye: I was really shocked that Mariah even did Idol, to be honest. The reality show judges are well-known and respected in the industry, but rarely do you see legends on these shows as panelists for more than a guest spot. Overall, I think she was awesome! I know we all expected divatude, but the show really humanized Mariah and made her relatable. Britney’s star shines bright in the dance department, so I always thought she would be better suited for SYTYCD. No shade to Britt, but someone that lives by the pre-recorded track shouldn’t be advising singers. A few months ago, Patti LaBelle said that the only divas of our generation are Fantasia and Christina, so I think that the judges chair is a good stepping stone before Xtina receives her throne next to Mariah.
The cat-fighting breathed some much needed life into an otherwise snooze of an AI season. The Mimi/Nicki beef was really weird to me though because their song, “Up Out My Face” is one of my fave Mariah jams. In interviews, Mariah said that she felt a way about it being another woman on the panel, but I’m not sure why she would be so spicy with Nicki since they worked together before. EveryAmerican Idol episode was a free master class in shade and reading from Mariah. As nasty as all of it got, I still quote some of Mariah’s best darts in regular convo.
Sam: I really don’t think regular Americans should be competing on TV to become popstars, we suddenly get this person Kelly Clarkson yelling at the press about how Beyoncé lip-synched the national anthem after that White House re-inauguration thing or whatever it was even though Kelly Clarkson proved that by not lip-synching she was guaranteed to sound terrible. Kelly Clarkson is completely, utterly uninspiring. We $%##!% that one up, we never should have elected her. I didn’t watch Mariah on American Idol, are you nuts.
Chris: I’ve never really watched Idol, but I liked how the Mariah/Nicki feud didn’t even seem to have a direct cause, as if there’s only so much space for two personalities in one room. There are important teleological questions here. And it inspired the elder woman to say the following words: “I don’t want to say anything that’s going to, heaven forbid, look like I’m saying anything negative … It was like going to work every day in hell with Satan.”
Blanche: When all was said and done, Mariah did ask Prince if he thought doing Idol was the wrong move for her and he said “No, it was the right move.”
Anything else you'd like to add?Sam: When Whitney Houston died, I was very sad about it, but then it occurred to me that one day Mariah Carey will die. I was legitimately terrified by the thought of it for a long time.
Stephanye: She’s Mariahculous!
Blanche: I just love Mariah Carey so much.
This panel was conducted by Ana Cecilia Alvarez.
adult-mag.com/mariah-carey-panel/